I know a guy who bought a pipe. It was not a big deal--one of the 18th c.
type that are common on sites and can be found in any antique mall. The
seller told him it was dug somewhere in the 1950s. It had been in
circulation for some time and this guy, an honest and respectable fellow who
likes to collect old stuff could not really see why his archaeologist
friends winced at his story.

I explained that any sale of objects fuels the further sale of objects which
in turn threatens all sites by creating a financial incentive to loot them
and rob them of their contributive potential. I think we all agree with that
simple position. I offered to take the guy to any number of nice Civil War
sites nearby that have been torn apart by pothunters to demonstrate the
damage. Furthermore I heard that the UN is getting interested in
international laws restricting the trade in objects--others are concerned
too.

The chat with this guy brought some issues back up for me. The fact is that
we don't control the world. Park sites obviously have their own enforced
rules, but farmers' fields do not. In America property rights are a very
powerful force and it is hard to mount a truly transcendent argument against
legal pothunting. So often our arguments against pothunting sound like a
territory squabble and we are caught in a contradiction--we want people to
respect and take interest in the material past, but we also want to control
or deny their access to it for their own uses and appreciation. Pothunters
in their writings point out that there are countless thousands of artifacts
packed away in archaeological warehouses that will never see the light of
day. They see this as meanspirited elitist hoarding. Obviously, this view
stems from a narrow and uninformed view of archaeology, but we still have to
engage with critiques like these. Is there a powerful antipothuntng argument
that is better than the one I outlined in the second paragraph? I know that
there are lots of strong feelings here, but I would be interested if anyone
has mounted a persuasive and effective argument against pothunting that
pothunters can recognize.

Phil Levy