Video: Indian Artifacts, Hot Items On Market

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)-Recently, Oktibbeha County Circuit Clerk Glenn Hamilton was arrested, and one of the charges was for possession of Indian artifacts.

It’s an unusual charge.

Bones, rocks, and stones are all pieces of the past people dig to get their hands on.

Most people want to get their hands on artifacts for two reasons, to collect them or sell them.

Some people will go to the extreme to get their hands on them, everything from breaking into buildings to digging in burial sites.

“The big deal is that we’re talking about the human story in Mississippi,” said MSU anthropology professor Evan Peacock.  “That story is an archeological story, they’re no written records for almost all of them.”

Evan Peacock said once people steal and disturb burial sites to get the rare objects that part of history could be gone forever.

“It’s irreplaceable, it’s fragile, it’s infinite, and it’s disappearing so when someone loots this stuff they’ve really destroyed something that really belong to all of humanity forever,” he said. “People who are doing the looting to sell the artifacts really have no excuse.”

Peacock said black market for the historic items is driving up sales.

“There’s a lot internet trafficking of artifacts in this day and age where it has really helped fuel this antiquity market as we call it, but you’ll see artifacts for sale at country stores, flee markets, and all kinds of places,” he said.

And some of the artifacts are dug up illegally on public land.

“The main law for public property is the archeological resource protective act, and that’s a law basically forbidding people without a permit from the government to do any kind of collecting or digging on public lands,” said Peacock.

There’s other laws to keep people off your property.

“There are trespassing laws, there’s a Mississippi antiquity law, there’s a Mississippi cemetery law, and depending on what happened to the artifacts, some of the federal laws might kick in also,” he said.

Peacock north Mississippi is a hotbed for history thieves.

Stealing the pieces of history can be a felony or misdemeanor, landing an accused thief in court.

“That depends entirely upon the amount of damage that was done to the archeology site, it also depends on how far away, and whether or not the artifacts crossed the state line, so it’s a lot of things that go into determining those charges,” said Peacock.