That Fuzzy Feeling

In surfing around looking for something in connection with the Blanding cases I found this post 'Chasing That First History High' by Keith Kloor from last year on his Collide-A-Scape environmental issues blog. It makes an interesting point:

For a would-be pothunter, I supppose arrowheads are like a gateway drug. Of course, not everybody becomes a junkie. And most people who become addicted to uncovering a piece of the past don’t become pothunters. That said, see if you can match the quote to the right author below. Don’t click on a link until giving it a try.

1) “I was hooked on this from the first time I picked up an arrowhead as a kid.”

2) “It is in our genes to collect and connect with our heritage. We have an inherent desire to touch and reflect on our past.”

3) “I grew up with a gut reaction to archaeology where an arrowhead in my hand felt warm with possibility.”

The three authors, in no particular order:

A) anonymous Blanding, Utah resident

B) Jane Waldbaum, past president of the Archaeological Institute of America

C) Craig Childs, well-known archaeology writer

Since not all the links in the original still work, the answers are 1- B, 2-A, 3-C. Kloor raises the question, what makes people collect ancient artefacts in the way they do? Glib explanations that its only "natural" and "in our genes" do not wash when we can see that in large areas of the earth's surface, and for large expanses of human history people have been quite happy to walk disregarding over relics of the past, sweep them away when building something new, and only in a few specificc cases, and for clearly definable reasons (usually legitimating something or other) are material remains of the past incorporated into modern constructs. Today bedouins collect artefacts that have been lying untouched in the desert for millennia and cart them to market towns because there is - thanks to foreign collectors - a market for them. The fact that until recently they were lying there to be used as source material for field surveys is evidence that for thousands of years there was not. It is collecting that is driving the looting.

Note the fuzzy term "pothunting" which makes the exploitive destruction of archaeological assemblages in search of collectables sound 'anorakish', in the same way as in the UK artefact hunters do not like to be called that, but "metal detectorists", considering that describing their activity as what it is (artefact hunting) is in some way offensive to them. The obvious parallels between the terms "artefact hunting" and "pothunting" used on different sides of the Atlantic give food for thought.