While Don Miller was hauling the world's treasures into his Rush County farmhouse over the decades, one wonders whether he foresaw a posthumous international ceremony.

If he did, then he was right.

Chinese diplomats came together with U.S. officials Thursday afternoon at the Eiteljorg Museum for an event that is guaranteed a seat of honor in the field of art-crime posterity: what the FBI says is the biggest return of cultural artifacts from the U.S. to China.

Kristi Johnson, chief of the FBI's Transnational Organized Crime Section, and Wen Dayan, deputy director general of China's Department of Foreign Affairs, signed a ceremonial certificate that puts 361 artifacts spanning millennia back into the hands of their home country.

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"It was a tragedy, I think. We have to change this situation. We have to protect not only our cultural heritage but the cultural heritage for everybody. This is for human(s), not only for China or not only for United States," Dayan said.

The FBI spent six days in 2014 seizing more than 7,000 cultural artifacts that 91-year-old Miller had schlepped to his Waldron home after world travels over 60 or so years. Agents found mammoth tusks from Canada, a Ming Dynasty vase, an Italian mosaic and enough human bones from Native American burial sites to make 500 people. The FBI said Miller's items were taken illegally or improperly.

Among the items the U.S. repatriated to China on Thursday were pottery, sculpture, armor, figurines and tools. The bureau did not release a full written list, saying it would leave that to China's discretion, but did post photos of the collection and showcased about 30 items during the ceremony.

For their part, Chinese diplomats focused on moving forward. Hu Bing, deputy administrator for the National Cultural Heritage Administration, called the event a "new starting point to, together with the U.S. side, establish and improve mechanisms for information sharing of stolen cultural objects," increase international exchanges and team up against looting and theft of cultural property.

"I'm proud for this cooperation between China and the U.S. government," Dayan said.

Why the FBI landed at Miller's door

Miller grew up in Rush County and joined the Army Reserve during World War II, where he said he helped work on the atomic bomb. He traveled on missions with his Christian church and participated in archaeological digs during his vacations while he worked at the Naval Avionics Center in Indianapolis, according to IndyStar archives.

Over time, Miller brought more and more treasures into his home. Tim Carpenter, the FBI Art Crime Team's supervisory special agent, said he was reluctant to answer exactly how the collector moved them across borders. But he said restrictions were more relaxed in previous decades.

"If you're talking about moving objects into the United States maybe back in the '50s or the '60s or the '70s, it may have been a little easier to just drive the stuff across the border through customs," Carpenter said.

Customs has "a lot of threats that they have to deal with and maybe they're not specifically trained or sufficiently trained to look for cultural property. They're busy looking for guns and drugs and weapons of mass destruction," he said.

The FBI received a tip in 2013 and spent some months talking with Miller before visiting his home in April 2014.

Overall, the FBI counted about 42,000 cultural objects from North and South America, Asia, the Caribbean and Papua New Guinea, among other places. According to IndyStar archives, Miller kept them in his home, a second unoccupied residence and in other outbuildings around his Rush County property, which is about 35 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

He died in 2015, almost a year after the FBI's seizure, and was not charged in connection with his collection.

Carpenter said he hesitated to be specific on why Miller wasn't charged.

"Mr. Miller passed away before our investigation was complete," he said. "We want to note that Mr. Miller was cooperative with the FBI. He cooperated with us from the outset."

Carpenter did not comment on whether anyone in connection with Miller's collection would be charged in the future since parts of the investigation are still ongoing.

What has happened since Miller died

About 300 people have worked on the case since 2014, Carpenter said. They include archaeologists, American Indian tribal experts, graduate students, and those from museums, academic institutions and foreign partners. And they are still not finished fully cataloging what they seized, he said.

Because no one can single-handedly identify all of the 7,000 artifacts, a group of graduate students from IUPUI has taken care of them in a space near Indianapolis. In the absence of knowing an item's particular history, the conservators have determined how to maintain it based on what it was made of.

"Even if we don't know where it comes from, our training from the program has shown us to look at the material types," said Liz Ale, a master's student in the Museum Studies Program at the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who has been contracted to work on the Miller case.

"Stones or lithics are going to be much more stable, so you store those one way. Metal objects or ceramics ... need a lot more care."

Holly Cusack-McVeigh, associate professor of anthropology and museum studies at IUPUI, said they moved the 361 items to the Eiteljorg days ago and left them in boxes for at least 12 hours to acclimate and avoid massive temperature fluctuation.

Behind a blue curtain during the ceremony, conservators measured and packed up the Chinese artifacts for shipment.

What will happen next?

Carpenter anticipated the Miller case would be a 10-year investigation when he first understood the breadth of the collection in the Waldron home.

Dayan said the Chinese administration has not yet decided where its hundreds of returned artifacts will go.

Before Thursday's ceremony, the FBI had repatriated artifacts to American Indian tribes, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Spain, Cambodia and Iraq, among others, Carpenter said. In a release, the bureau said that accounts for about 15 percent of what they seized, and they are reaching out to other countries and Native American tribes and asking them to submit inquiries about the objects via email at artifacts@fbi.gov.

More repatriation ceremonies, including one for New Zealand, are in the works, Carpenter said.