Antiquities dealer Robert B. Knowlton, 66, from Grand Junction Colorado, was among 26 people in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico who were rounded up in a two-year sting operation in the Four Corners region discussed earlier on this blog. He earlier admitted he had sold an archaeological resource, a small sandstone pipe, that had been excavated from an Anasazi site on federal land near Blanding to a federal undercover operative during an investigation in 2008 and mailed it from Colorado to Utah.
He was sentenced on Friday to 18 months of probation and "also banned from federal land for collecting purposes during the 18 months".
Knowlton was indicted in 2009 by a federal grand jury in Denver on five felony counts for allegedly selling looted American Indian antiquities worth $6,750 to the informant. In a plea deal, he pleaded guilty this year to a misdemeanor related to only the pipe, valued at less than $500.Interestingly, Knowlton, had stated in a court filing that he had obtained the pipe after the death of Lamar Lindsay, an archaeologist employed by the state of Utah, from the latter's sister. The court document stated that the Utah Division of State History excavated the site in 1979 and 1980. So how had the pipe entered the sister's possession?
Robert Boczkiewicz, 'Colorado man sentenced for artifacts theft', Salt Lake Tribune Nov 19, 2010.
There is an interesting mention on the Lindsay episode by "Teofil" on the Collide-a-scape blog called simply "looting". It is followed by a thought-provoking series of comments. It would be interesting to know more about the manner in which this particular published (?) item reached a Colorado dealer. Was foul play involved, or were there legitimate reasons why the object was separated from the excavation archive and its intended destination was for some reason unknown to Lindsay's family?
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