Looted and Recovered Artifacts: The Art of Deciding What to Curate as Demonstrated Through the Cerberus Collection

Summary

This is an abstract from the "To Curate or Not to Curate: Surprises, Remorse, and Archaeological Grey Area" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of Utah, much like other federal agencies with a law enforcement arm, recover looted or distributed artifacts through various scenarios including cases and forfeitures. The Cerberus Collection is BLM-Utah’s largest collection obtained under these circumstances, consisting of 50,000 artifacts originating from the American Southwest and recovered as evidence or forfeited by defendants involved in the Cerberus case between 2007 and 2013. The high quality and large quantity of artifacts in the collection led the BLM to develop criteria for long-term disposition focused on determining which artifacts to curate, which to incorporate into educational collections, and which to return to tribes for use outside of the NAGPRA process. These decisions are currently being made by a specially designated team who are determining the best long-term dispositions for each artifact or artifact type. This is accomplished by assessing the quality, archaeological significance, regional origination, and rarity of the artifacts as they pertain to federal laws and regulations and Department of Interior policy. This process and the associated criteria developed by BLM-Utah will help set future precedent and serve as a guide to agencies in managing current or future collections generated under similar circumstances with related needs.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• To Curate or Not to Curate: Surprises, Remorse, and Archaeological Grey Area

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23743