Tracking loot Missoula man makes living probing plundered archaeological sites

By Robert Struckman - 03/11/2006

A pitted and rusty Civil War bayonet and a finely hafted 800-year-old stone ax head lay on Martin McAllister’s coffee table near a small pile of stone arrowheads.

“This ax was more than likely placed with a burial. You can see it’s had very little wear,” McAllister said, picking it up and turning it on his palm.

The array of objects had been seized from grave robbers and looters. The items themselves aren’t worth all that much to collectors the stone ax might bring $800, the bayonet as much as $1,000.

But the damage done by those who plunder historic sites is far greater.

Assessing that damage as well as training law enforcement groups and federal agencies is McAllister’s business. He owns Archaeological Resource Investigations, a one-man company ready to grow, he said.

This year, his gross revenues totaled about $100,000, he said. He hopes interest in enforcing anti-looting laws in Southeast Asia and Central America will push the company into a growth mode.

Two longtime colleagues may join the company soon, allowing Archaeological Resource to do more work with the looting of underwater sites and also to do more sleuthing, McAllister said.

On a national scale, the field of cultural resource protection has blossomed in recent years, said Scott Stull, a senior historic archaeologist with Hartgen Archaeological Associates in upstate New York. Stull is also executive secretary of the 10-year-old American Cultural Resources Association, a trade association with 157 member companies. McAllister isn’t a member, but he intends to join, he said.

Construction and real estate development generate a large piece of the $1 billion cultural resource economy, Stull said.

“Whenever development accelerates, so do we. We’re part of the development industry just like home building,” Stull said.

In general, most cultural resource protection firms help developers follow state and federal laws. Archaeological Resource Investigations has a slightly different niche. McAllister helps federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management keep track of cultural resources and prosecute the criminals who despoil them.

McAllister, an archaeologist who began his career on Mayan sites in Guatemala, spent 10 years with the Forest Service on the Tonto National Forest in Arizona. He helped investigators on about 100 cases, about 20 of which resulted in criminal charges. He also developed courses for the Archaeological Resources Protection Training Program run by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers and has taught there since 1983.

In 1985, McAllister went solo with his contracting firm, but the work has remained essentially similar. He trains law enforcement. He assesses damage to sites. He offers expert testimony in court cases.

Law enforcement officials aren’t concerned with the opportunistic collectors who, for instance, collect the random arrowhead or Civil War uniform button.

Rather, the looters whom McAllister helps investigate are involved in major destruction of cultural sites, and the stakes are high. Investigators and arresting officers often find caches of illegal weapons and illicit drugs. The three underground economies are closely linked, McAllister said.

He has three ways to put a dollar figure on the damage.

He considers the commercial value of the See LOOT, Page D4 looted objects. Next, he tallies the cost it would have taken for archaeologists to study and catalog the ruined site. Finally, he estimates the cost of restoring the site and repairing the damage as much as possible.

Public awareness of the damage done by looters is growing, McAllister said, and that’s good.

“These guys are ripping off our collective heritage,” he said.

The worst offenders rob both ancient and modern graves the age makes no difference to them, he said.

“You wouldn’t want someone in the dark of night stripping the wedding ring from your grandmother’s finger,” he said.

In decades past, archaeologists played a morally ambiguous role, he added. For the most part, that’s no longer the case. Most archaeology happens when developers stumble upon previously unknown sites their task becomes one of cataloging the history that would otherwise be destroyed and lost.

Still, racist notions that American Indian grave sites are somehow OK sources for collectibles linger, he said.

“That’s the wrong moral standpoint,” he said.

He has a Polaroid photograph of a grinning looter posing with three human skulls, his hands full of femurs. In another, a looter is French-kissing a human skull.

“These people have no respect for the dead,” McAllister said.

The looters in the Polaroids pleaded guilty to federal charges, he said.

Still, there’s a lot more work to be done.

The fact is, artifacts have a strong international market, and pieces taken from their context are often tough to track. Once on the open market, they can be easily and often legally bought and sold.

McAllister plans to take Archaeological Resources into investigative work as well as into the growing field of underwater site protection, assessment and investigation. The sites range from shipwrecks to formerly terrestrial spots recently submerged by changing coastlines and waterways.

He also hopes to offer the firm’s services to foreign governments. In other countries, looters have been ruthless, in some cases murdering archaeologists who stumble across them.

“As far as we know, there have been no murders in the United States. There have been some near misses,” he said.

“We’re not going to sit idly by,” he said.

Reporter Robert Struckman writes for the Missoulian. He can be reached at 523-5262 or at rstruckman@missoulian.com.