Random surface found arrowheads are NOT bound into
any type of context, no more than finding a 100 year old silver coin at the
beach is! These were made by the BILLIONS, used by the BILLIONS, and lost
or broken by the BILLIONS. What difference does it make to you, me, or the
Natural History Society of Hooterville that someone found an arrowhead?
Even if it is a different style than normally found in the area, it could just
as well have been dropped there by a travelling collector 50 years ago, or
washed there during any one of hundreds of floods. Did you know they often
find ancient Roman and Greek coins when excavating American colonial
sites? This doesn't mean that the Romans were here first, it means that
some colonists brought over a collection of coins and some ended up being
lost. What if we found a whole midden stomping through a field in
Iowa? What difference does it make? Do we really need to
scientifically study every single item and every single place that anyone has
ever cooked a meal or pitched a tent? Does it matter if we confirm for the
500th time that Plains Indians ate bison, small animals,wild berries, and
anything else they could find? Who do you suggest pay for
this?
A "scientist" has just announced, upon examining
two tiny partial fossil jaws found in river sediment in Africa, that they are 37
million years old, are ancestors of the primates, and that they PROVE that our
ancestral primates originated in Africa. Also, due to one of the teeth
having a short root, it PROVES that the animal was nocturnal with large eyes to
see in the dark. This is crap! Every time a self-proclaimed expert
gives a crackpot opinion to support his preconceived ideas, people line up to
ooh and aah, until the next crackpot comes along.
For heaven's sake, this is a METEORITE list!
Meteorites, with the exception of those rare examples that have been turned into
cultural objects by their ancient, original finders, have NO cultural or
environmental significance! If you have a 200 kg main mass that you dug up
in a field in the middle of Nebraska, it really doesn't matter to the scientific
community where or when it fell. It only matters to the meteorite
collecting community. Meteorites fall EVERY DAY! What do you expect
to find that would in the least but be important in a random pit dug to find
meteorites? Maybe farmers should be banned from plowing their fields, they
might disturb something that a handful of people think is
important. It's funny, I don't see those scientists going out of
their way to conserve these areas. How many museums have HUGE collections
buried away in a storehouse, rotting away for lack of funds and interest by both
the public and themselves. If there is nothing exciting enough for the
academic to be able to further their career through publication, the artifact is
just tossed aside, either at the site or in the basement back at the foundation,
never to be seen again.
Many things ARE deteriorating at a remarkable
rate. Fertilizers, acid rain, and other chemicals are damaging
artifacts and specimens still underground at a prodigious rate. 1,500 year
old ancient coins & artifacts found in Britain are often much more
deteriorated than similar finds made only 25 to 50 years ago, due to
contamination in the ground water supply.
Lee Cornelius
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 6:45
AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Hunters and
recoverererers
What may seem random to you may not be so. A random arrowhead is
typically only seen as isolated because people picking them up do not know
that there is in fact a cultural diversity represented in stone tools and
fragments of prehistoric industry overlooked. These proximal
objects have little, if any, market value. If one has
knowledge that this "random" projectile point is surrounded by copious debris,
this would certainly soil the practice, would it not? What
constitutes your conception of an adequate distance between
isolates, that itself determines the identity of an isolate? Things are
buried, but they'll live to see another day without your pocket for
protection. I can see that your world provides unlocked vaults,
dropped wallets, and unclaimed inheritances. Is it not too
much for one who can find time to pick up artifacts to have a GPS
and a camera? Could you observe microorganisms without a
microscope? What does an arrowhead mean without awareness and record
of its context and the contexts of arrowheads?
Is your sense of self-regulation a law itself? What do
you mean by "studied"? Don't you mean "mined"? Understand that you are an
amateur for a reason. Just admit it: you are a profiteer with no
consistent, internalized scruple.
Sure, I have stones, but I don't need a 20 kilo main mass sitting
prominently on a shelf. I stopped buying over a year ago when I
realized that I not only had enough material for years of personal research,
but that my interest was detrimental to certain other areas of research, as
well as peripheral sciences that are affected because many suppliers
espouse your "treasure hunting" ethos and have expanded their
horizons.
You have to put your foot down at some point.
I should support the "cause" by collecting from your collection. It will
just rot sitting there anyway.
-thaddeus Besedin Dave Freeman mjwy
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
BLAH,
BLAH, BLAH. What have YOU done to preserve science? And, what do
you have in your collection that you shouldn't have (meaning anything
that wasn't correctly scientifically removed)? Exactly what are your
credentials to be knowledgeable to whine..? It is very easy for those
stoic office types to complain about those in the field doing the real
WORK. Our western lands are not studied because the amateur
is shut out by the scientific lobby in congress so the stuff just sits and
gets eroded away by nature. In the CFR, under "artifacts" there
is no penalty for collecting random arrowheads on the surface of the
ground. So, don't forget that. Don't forget that private land
still is private, and what may be collected there is not controlled by blue
footed boobies. Poo poo to all those that have an opinion but do
nothing to support the cause. I am actually still surprised that
anyone can own meteorites or artifacts of any kind with the few
bone-heads-for-science that roam our country. There is nothing wrong
with good science but letting things erode to nothing in the name of
preservation is quite self serving for nothing. I will get of my soap box
now. Mr. Dave and Mr. Jim....got me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DAve
F.
Thaddeus Besedin wrote:
They should be recovered, but we should be aware of how our
excavation impacts other deposits. I'll let this rest, guys. You know my
position by now. The same argument ("it will rot if I do nothing") is
advanced by "relic" hunters who search rivers, but there is a
major difference between surface hunting and excavation, and especially in
the contexts of drainages and areas subject to mass wasting. to protect
their "troves," looters typically do not disclose the provenances of their
finds when offered for sale, if at all they have been conscientious enough
to record a GPS position. Such negligence is irresponsible, and
proves that the motive for these activities is itself personal gain.
Seriously, the prices that these meteorites yield would be
better deserved if all sciences involved with the thin,
fragile surface of the earth are considered. This would be the
attitude of a professional in any other invasive field.
-Thaddeus
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