The week I found a looted burial site on a field trip

Last May I was on a survey in southern Utah with my field school. We stumbled onto a site that had been completely torn apart by looters. Pottery pieces were scattered everywhere and they had dug a 3 foot hole right through the middle. The worst part was the human bone fragments mixed in with the dirt pile. The instructor counted 14 different pot sherds from at least 5 different vessels. Has anyone else run into freshly looted sites like that and what did you do about it?

3 comments

3 Comments

parkerbrown1mo ago

Saw a similar mess out near Moab a couple years back. Whole site looked like someone took a shovel to it for fun. We reported it to the BLM office right away and they sent someone out to document everything. The bone fragments really got to me too, knowing those were actual people's remains just left in the dirt. It's frustrating how common this problem is out there.

oliverhernandez1mo ago

@parkerbrown, weren't those bone fragments actually animal bones though?

oscarc121mo ago

I was up near the Gila Cliff Dwellings last spring and ran into the EXACT same thing, @oliverhernandez. Those bone fragments everyone was arguing about? We found a site that looked like someone had just smashed up a bunch of old pots and spread them around. I called the Forest Service ranger station and they told me to take GPS coordinates and photos but not touch anything. Turned out the bones were from a bighorn sheep but the pottery was legit ancient. It's frustrating how many people think it's fine to just dig things up for fun out there.