VIDEO: Damage to park being assessed; Penalties are steep for theft of artifacts

PETERSBURG — Experts are still working on determining the extent of the damage and possible thefts discovered at the Petersburg National Battlefield last week, but it's almost certain that something vanished when someone began digging holes in the ground at the park: history.

Park rangers at the battlefield told the Progress-Index on Saturday that there were eight investigators working to assess the damage done by whoever dug what the initial investigation found was “a large number of excavations in the park.”

The National Park Service announced the discovery in a press release Friday night.

"This is an affront to the memory of people who fought and died on this field and it is destruction and theft of history from the American people," said Petersburg National Battlefield Superintendent Lewis Rogers in the statement.

The area of the battlefield where the digging took place is being treated as an active crime scene. Rogers urged any members of the public who have information about the crime to contact the park service at (888) 653-0009.

Chris Brice, chief of interpretation at the battlefield, said the public response to the incident has been sympathetic. He said he received an email from a man in Canada who had fond memories of visiting the park years ago and said he was writing “with sadness and a bit of anger.”

Other sympathisers asked why would people even think of doing this, Brice said.

“It really made my day” to see those sentiments, Brice said. “I'm glad to see that kind of response.”

Once the damage assessment is done, park officials said, a criminal investigation will follow. If the culprit is identified, the federal government's response is likely to be very unsympathetic.

Under the Archaeological Resource Protection Act, passed by Congress in 1979, “No person may excavate, remove, damage or otherwise alter or deface, or attempt to excavate, remove, damage or otherwise alter or deface any archaeological resource located on public lands or Indian lands” without first obtaining a permit.

The maximum penalty for violating the act is a fine of up to $10,000 and/or a prison term of up to a year. However, if the value of the relics, artifacts or other archaeological resources involved and the cost of restoration and repair of those resources is greater than $500, the guilty party can be fined up to $20,000 or imprisoned for up to two years, or both.

On a second or subsequent conviction, the maximum fine rises to $100,000 and the maximum prison sentence to five years.

In 2002, “unlawful sale, purchase, exchange, transportation or receipt of cultural heritage resources” were added to the list of prohibited activities.

Congress passed the act and imposed those penalties at the urging of the park service and numerous archaeologists and historians who believe that an international black market for relics or artifacts is behind much of the unauthorized digging.

Perhaps even more than the loss of the artifacts themselves, scholars lament the loss of the knowledge that a carefully executed archaeological dig provides by precisely documenting the location of each object and its association with other objects.

Looters who descend by dark of night with metal detectors and rip relics from hastily dug holes not only don't provide that kind of archaeological record, they also may unwittingly destroy other, potentially even more historically valuable objects.

That's known to be a potential problem at the Petersburg battlefield, where a study performed in 1998 by University of Maryland archaeologists found that large areas of the park have never been archaeologically surveyed, while one site that has been examined was found to hold evidence of human presence dating back some 4,000 years — evidence that a metal detector wouldn't find, but which a Civil War relic-hunter's shovel might destroy.

The size of the problem — and the park service's opinion of it — are evident from data collected by the service's “Listing of Outlaw Treachery” (LOOT) Clearinghouse, which now contains hundreds of cases of violations of the 1979 act.

As of 2007, the latest year for which figures were available, Virginia had the fourth-highest number of cases in the database, 40. The three states with higher totals — California with 50, New Mexico with 52 and Arizona with 68 — are all hotspots for looting of Native American sites.

Some observers believe legitimate collectors are being unfairly blamed for spurring the looting of federally protected sites. Collectors, they say, serve a useful function by making publicly available artifacts that might otherwise remain hidden in university or museum laboratory warehouses, or under the ground.

Petersburg resident Ben Greenbaum said he began collecting Civil War artifacts (on private land) when he was in the third grade. He remains an enthusiastic collector and appraiser, and has served as president of the Central Virginia Civil War Collectors Association.

Greenbaum also has worked as an archaeological field supervisor for the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology and is a member of the American Civil War Museum and the Company of Military Historians.

With that background, he said, “I remain in both worlds in regard [to] collecting Civil War relics. Overall, I feel that relic hunters are not archaeologists and therefore should not dig in national parks; the parks should remain the purview of the research of professionally trained archaeologists. Indeed, haphazard digging can cause the erosion, degradation and ultimate destruction of historic sites, like the Petersburg National Battlefield.”

However, he said, “To me, artifact recovery by collectors, on private property, with the permission of the property owner, does not really impact sites that will never be preserved and, in fact, may actually fall prey to ever encroaching urban sprawl and development. ... For the most part, the federal government simply does not have the fiscal resources to do any significant Civil War archaeology, so artifacts are simply deteriorating in the ground.”

Greenbaum said a possible solution would be for “Civil War collectors and archaeologists ... to formulate a working partnership like the controlled metal-detecting completed, under the auspices of the National Park Service and the University of Oklahoma, several years ago on the Custer Battlefield along the Little Bighorn. ... I do feel that there is room for common ground and implementation of excavation of important artifacts still remaining beneath the earth.”

•Michael Buettner may be reached at mbuettner@progress-index.com or 804-722-5155.