Let those arrowheads be

Scholars: Drought no license to pilfer

Drought provides advantages to scavengers and collectors who explore the expanded shorelines of the Triangle's shrinking reservoirs and lakes. The mud-encrusted fishing lures, waterlogged watches and other contemporary artifacts are theirs to keep.

But pocketing the shards of Native American pottery, spearheads and other remains from past cultures can get people in trouble.

Federal and state laws prohibit the removal of archaeological materials from public lands and carry stiff fines and potential jail time. That fact is unknown to many shore combers who think nothing of palming an arrowhead or other souvenir from a trip to Falls Lake or other public parks.

With the drought luring more curious visitors to Triangle reservoirs and parks, Army Corps of Engineers staff and state park officials said they must distinguish between those poking around for fun and those eager to improperly add to their private archaeological collections.

"What my rangers and other managing agency partners don't want to do is create this suspicious nature that every time we look out there, we think someone is pilfering cultural resources off the public land," said Thomas E. Freeman, the Army Corps of Engineers' longtime operations manager for Falls Lake.

Park officials at state recreation areas at Falls Lake and Jordan Lake say they watch for people removing archaeological materials but have not issued any citations recently. It is not clear how big a problem amateur collecting has become, but state park rangers and archaeologists have detected recently that it is taking place.

Eric Dousharm, a park superintendent for the Falls Lake State Recreation Area, said nine rangers patrol a territory that includes a 12,000-acre lake and 26,000 acres of woodlands. Although a citation was not issued, Dousharm said, one Falls Lake ranger had to offer a gentle reminder to a visitor on the shoreline several weeks ago about the federal and state laws against removing archaeological artifacts.

Makes the job tougher

Professional archaeologist Ramie Gougeon said he and his crew were surveying Falls Lake this fall when they found recently dug holes in the lake bed with small piles of pieces of old nails and horseshoes -- telltale signs of unauthorized looting with a metal detector. Gougeon, who works out of Chapel Hill for Panamerican Consulting, an Alabama company that performs contract surveys for the Army Corps of Engineers, said amateur scavenging make the company's jobs more challenging.

"It makes it tougher for us to interpret the full range of activities that happened at a site," he said. "It'd be like having burglars go through your kitchen, steal all the good silverware, steal all the nice platters and then have me as an archaeologist interpret what your economic standing is. And I say, 'Well, I see some paper plates, styrofoam plates and some plastic forks and knives. These must have been poor individuals.' "

Although the drought provides authorized researchers with opportunities to explore acres of former lake bottoms, federal and state officials said there are no plans to launch new surveys.

Richard Kimmel, an archaeologist with the Army Corps of Engineers, said most of the Falls Lake impoundment zone was surveyed before the project's dam was completed in 1981. Had corps officials known the drought would last this long, Kimmel said, perhaps they would have launched further studies this year.

"But again, the funds are simply not there right now," he said. "It's difficult for us in the current federal financial crunch to suddenly allocate large sums of money to do shoreline surveys."

Getting it identified

That hasn't stopped amateur enthusiasts from toting their findings to downtown Raleigh to proudly consult with the Office of State Archaeology. That is when it falls to State Archaeologist Stephen R. Claggett or Deputy State Archaeologist Dolores A. Hall to break it to them that they would have been better off leaving those spearheads and other findings alone.

"We get people who come into our office and say, 'Could you identify this? I picked it up at Falls Lake' or Jordan or something," Hall said. "We don't confiscate it, but we do tell them that it's illegal. Most people don't know. They're not doing it to be malicious or anything like that."

Rob Martin, 52, of Rocky Mount joked that after 25 years of collecting arrowheads and other artifacts, he can't walk along a patch of ground without keeping his head down searching for souvenirs. When he lived in Raleigh, Martin, a substance abuse counselor, frequently visited Jordan Lake and found stone tool remnants and other artifacts. And for all the concern within the archaeological community about amateur collectors, Martin said, he has never come across an archaeologist in the field.

"If you said, 'Oh, I found an arrowhead! I better call an archaeologist,' they'd just laugh at you. Because they're everywhere," he said.

(Staff researcher Brooke Cain contributed to this report.)