No more collecting on public lands

[Oroblanco]

Greetings,
Found this tonight, was curious as to when this "regulation" came into effect, quote:

Is collecting artifacts such as arrowheads, pottery or flakes allowed on federally managed public lands?

Collecting arrowheads, pottery or flakes is prohibited on public lands. Title 18 United States Code Section 641 prohibits theft of anything belonging to the United States. The removal of arrowheads, pottery or flakes from public lands constitutes theft of government property.
(From a NM BLM site, made the text red as that is what it made me see! )

So I guess it is far, far better to just have those old stone points, flakes, tools etc just slowly be eroded away, dissolved into the soils and lost forever? What kind of logic is that?

I had researched this not too long ago and found that it was legal to collect any type of stone artifact, but not to include pottery, organics etc from public lands; so have the laws changed in the last few months? If so, why? Who is making these regulations? Is it perhaps time to start a letter-writing campaign? (Living in a western state with nearly 90% of the land owned by government really limits the areas one can go hunting!) My wife and I own a hundred acres which has turned up several interesting finds and includes a good sized tool-making area and two pit houses, but ye gads if this law covers all the federal lands here in AZ then we are going to be stuck looking ONLY here!

Oroblanco

 

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[TreasureTales]

Gollum your pix are a hoot!!!

The Antiquities Act of 1906 has been updated and refined many many times over the past 100 years. Where I like to go artifact hunting, the BLM is VERY serious about apprehending, arresting, fining and/or imprisoning people who do so little as to pick up and pocket an arrowhead.
I ALWAYS get a written permit slip from the rancher each year so that if some BLM ranger tries to harass me I can show the guy my little scrap of paper. I've had rangers go so far as to DIRECT me to PRIVATE PROPERTY to do my rockhounding...and this despite the fact that we were both standing on a tract of BLM land comprising MILLIONS of acres. My personal opinion is that some of these government employees (they used to be called Public SERVANTS...what a joke these days!) want to keep the PUBLIC LANDS as their own private lands.

There are several people on eBay who routinely SELL old forest service signs, newer forest service signs, paper forest service signs, US Fish & Wildlife signs, Park Service signs, etc. who are RETIRED GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES. If you and I can't swipe "government property" from "government lands" why is it that these guys can not only swipe it but then also SELL it?

There's also a guy who has an old bottle website. He used to work for the BLM and he ANNOUNCES in his website that he started collecting bottles when he worked as a ranger for BLM and came across old homesteads and ranches. He has an excellent bottle collection, and he sells bottles over the internet. Gee, I wonder where he got some of his bottles!!!!??

The government should spend more (of OUR) money and more of its time investigating, arresting, and punishing its own employees. They are the real criminals.

The artifacts that are left on the surface will eventually get broken by a steer's hoof or by a government employee doing some trailblazing in a government vehicle. But I guess they think that is better than letting us taxpaying Americans pick them up and save them for posterity.

As you can probably tell, I am totally P.O.ed about all these ridiculous laws. There are some places on BLM land that are off-limits to vehicles EXCEPT for government vehicles. Just another case of the bureaucrats saying "do as I say and not as I do." They drive around in new pickups and SUVs, with filled gas tanks, and with nobody looking over their shoulders while WE PAY for all of that.

I'm all for them catching litterbugs or arsonists or people who deface historic or natural sites, or who dig up rare flora or who poach wildlife or who grow pot on public lands or who manufacture meth on our lands, but when they go after some guy who is merely picking up rocks or relics or artifacts...well that just chaps my hide big time.

SCREW 'EM!

 

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[norcalrockhunter]

Here it becomes a problem on BLM is where its a restricted area like a wild life refuge or a preservation area, but I have always carried this document with me and I never put a shovel in the ground on BLM land, I have been questioned several times but I just show them the document they check it out and just ask not to do any digging or cave hunting, I agree with you its sucks that they control the land that is public it really sucks

 

[TreasureTales]

A friend of mine sent me a brochure issued by a Nevada BLM office in the Las Vegas area that states bottles less than 100 years old MAY BE COLLECTED. I've got another brochure from a different BLM office that says anything 50 years or younger MAY BE COLLECTED. These guys can't even get on the same page about the laws, so how the he11 are we supposed to? I avoid doing any collecting of any type on public lands because it is just too much of a hassle. I figure the huge ranch I visit is good enough for me.

What I'd really like to do is videotape a BLM employee who is collecting stuff on public lands and then do a citizen's arrest. Maybe then those guys would straighten out for awhile.

 

[Oroblanco]

videotape a BLM employee who is collecting stuff on public lands

Heck you have something there, we ought to try to get some of these BLM and forest service personnel interested in our hobby - invite them along! Maybe if they could experience it, they might re-read those regulations and take a different approach? It makes no sense for relics to lie in the ground until they dissolve into the soil, however it benefits everyone to have SOMEONE go out and retrieve them, who would protect them and display them for posterity. The idea might be to keep everything in the soil for the archaeologists, but the archaeologists cannot possibly hope to ever search the massive area of the United States, they can only investigate very small areas. So by all means, protect the historically important sites for the archaeologists, but for those very common sites which covers pretty much every square foot of land in the world, let the public search!

The worst incidents seem to happen with government officers who have no experience of the hobby and mis-interpretation of regulations; perhaps if we were to take a positive approach and engage some of these officers (they are people too, think of that thrill when you found your first point or flake of gold) we could at least avoid some of the worst "scraps".
Oroblanco

 

[Dave N Japan]

WOW...Makes me want to stay in Okinawa real bad! I guess I will leave my sifter here when I move back to San Diego for a couple of years. Everything is so easy going here.. I'm sure there are laws as those here too, but as long as you are not digging or MD'ing at a major castle site ..I have not been giving a hard time and even helped the archaeologist here once at a dig site. They even made me a copy of their coin book to help me ID my finds. but I'm sure there are some hard core japanese government guys out there somewhere.
Anyway, Good Luck to all!

 

[ghost surf]

I would like to se a t-shirt that all of us metal detectorists can wear, that would say something about this bull and give some interesting facts about metal detecting...
I am wondering if some research into our hobby, then do a book on it..not on metal detectors....the machine,but about this hobby ..so people will see what we do, how hard it is and that it that it is not all the glamrer and money makeing they think..also How it helps with the law in searches and how we are with the guys who keep our world safe....not to meantion how we help learn about our past and even the present.

 

[norcalrockhunter]

DAve in Japan, I used to live in Japan, Out side of Tokyo in the 70's and did some relic hunting there when I was a kid,
anyways, I have the experiance of being caught looking for artifacts on BLM about 6 years ago, I do know that a hand ful of BLM people do look for bottles,artifacts, gold etc, on and off the job. I have personally seen a collection of a BLM guy who spent over 25 years with them and I have to say it was the largest, and one of the nicest collections I have seen in many years, but he kept it really hush hush, Wounder why? I was also told by one then one offical that anything over 100 years falls under the antiques act, but anything on the surface is fair game.I always caring the document that I posted eariler with me just in case of something happening, I'm not saying this is a fix but its good ammo to have

 

[Dave N Japan]

Maybe I need a job at the BLM Then maybe I would have a very nice private collection!
I just wonder if the world and Archaeologist would learn more about the past by working hand in hand with us and not worrying about what we may find and have in a collection.

 

[norcalrockhunter]

for the most part the call us looters, what I say are we looting, I'm picking it off the ground. we do not preserve the arc site when we are picking up stuff. I've turn over several sites in the past that I thought were of huge or great historical value, then to find out they were dig and everything was put in boxes and put away, no one has a chance to see them, There is where I get a little upset in all this, We all learn from peoples finds and to have a college or some type of society collect and study them then to not let anyone else see it or give feed back on it is ridiculous

 

[Oroblanco]

Check out this thread:http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,59317.0.html

The way the rule used to go was any stone tools or weapons on the surface were fair game, never pottery or pottery shards or basketry, any kind of organics including human remains etc. The way the new regs are written it sounds like NOTHING is fair game. I guess it is better for those finely worked, super brittle stone points to be stomped on by cattle or wild game and broken into tiny fragments. So they are worth more as soil additives than as "relics" apparently.
Oroblanco

 

[Mark S.]

The info that norcalrockhunter posted is actually from the regulations of ARPA 1979. The way ARPA was written was to allow for surface collecting of arrowheads and also to allow for metal detecting anything less then 100 years old if not on an archaeological site. Also all coins and bullets are exempted from the 100 year rule. Unless on an archaeological site. Which you are not supposed to be on anyway. The way the law reads the public is supposed to be able to "collect" on federal property within these guidelines. However that is not the way it is enforced. The archaeologists have hijacked the law.

Did you know that there is a provision in the regulations that keeps the site locations secret? They are even exempted from the freedom of information act. In other words, no one other than the archaeologists and a chosen few can legally know where the sites are. That also means that there is no oversight mechanism. How do we know that these "sites" are actually legitimate? This is how they keep all land closed. As we have no way of knowing where the protected sites are. And land that has not been surveyed yet "could" contain sites.

It is a big scam.

Mark S.