[Northkeep] Period artifacts for sale or travels and travails oflooting 3rd

[Marc Carlson]

>From: "Alton lePeto" <altonscompany at hotmail.com>
>....(pottery) shards.  Later in life, while attending university, I found 
>out I was a "gasp" pot hunter!

Don't worry, the Archeo-gestapo has you pegged.

>Now I know that with in the scientific community of archeology there is the 
>theory that all of these items are in themselves significant, but I also 
>know that whats in my back yard for the most part belongs to me.

Absolutely.

>... A cooking stone is just a cooking stone and just because a copper 
>knife, pottery shard, clay lamp, etc is thousands of years old does not 
>make it a chunk of the "true cross".

No, but let's put it in a different way -- Custer battlefield - you've seen 
the studies done on that where they've been able to trace the cource of what 
happened by where the shells fell -- even so far as to trace individual 
weapons across the battlefield.  Neat, hun?

Of course, had tourists picked up all those spent casings, that information 
would have been totally lost (and in factit's likely that some HAS been lost 
from people going around picking up cool bits of metal laying on the 
ground).   The same thing was done at the Battlesight of the Battle of 
Towton, although obviously not looking for spent shell casings - and there a 
lot of material HAS been lost to people just picking it up.

Archaeologists, as a rule, aren't interested in objects - they are 
interested in what those artifacts can tell us. --and some of that 
information is held in the context where they are found.

And Alton, I didn't say don't buy stuff - I said be careful who you bought 
it from.

M/D

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