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>Amazing this wasn't a bigger story here in Indiana Because they know their customers. "Elderly amateur archeologist has collection seized by FBI for doing ba

>Amazing this wasn't a bigger story here in Indiana Because they know their customers. "Elderly amateur archeologist has collection seized by FBI for doing basically what professional state sanctioned archeologists do but without state permissions" would go over like a lead balloon pretty much anywhere that isn't fairly affluent and left leaning. The details here don't paint a charitable picture of the FBI unless you go into this with a lot of priors that the FBI are the good guys (and generally speaking being "not poor" and "not right" are prerequisites to those priors). This isn't a cache of antique machine guns so you don't get the benefit of having ~half the people who care biased against the guy from the get go. There's zero chance Miller's heirs want and have the capability to do anything do to with several shipping containers worth of archeological junk that need to be cared for lest it go bad. The only thing the FBI did here was accelerate the process of combing through the collection, repatriating remains as applicable and cold calling museums and asking if they want junk as applicable by making it happen during his life rather than immediately after. Regardless of who his heirs were they almost certainly would have gotten in contact with someone who knew their archeology and had them see the collection, the bones and native stuff paired together would have raised flags, they'd have called authorities and we'd be right in the same place. So what good came out of any of this? That said, I think as far as the feds go they acted pretty reasonably here, way less needless destruction than I'm used to expecting from them.

mbreese 5y ago
> So what good came out of any of this As far fetched as it may be -- I'm not sure who would do this in the first place -- this will help to dissuade any future persons from trying to do the same thing. It's not always about the current crime, but preventing the next one. But, here, it seems like this was never about prosecuting Miller. > There seemed to be little will at the Department of Justice to prosecute Miller, who was 91, for what was tantamount to property crimes The main focus of the FBI was to get the items and remains back to where they belonged. They just wanted right the wrong. Finally, the article does cover exactly what you mentioned -- that more of these "collections" will likely be discovered over the coming years as the next generation inherits them and wants to have nothing to do with them. > He expects to hear about more problematic private collections over the years as they’re handed down to younger generations more troubled by them
- drewcoo 5y ago
  > this will help to dissuade any future persons from trying to do the same thing How will this dissuade anyone? Evidence shows that someone else being punished does not dissuade people. And basically nothing happened to Miller except that they took away his toys. And the story was pretty much buried. If anything all of that should entice, not dissuade.
- oauea 5y ago
  So they took a 91 year old man's life work away from him. A collection that otherwise would most likely have never been recovered at all, and would've just been paved over.
  - mbreese 5y ago
    He desecrated graves and stole skulls from remains — including from fresh burials (it’s in the article). He also manually put arrowheads into some of these skulls to make it look like that was their cause of death. And the items that would have been of archeological or anthropological significance weren’t documented or handled in such a way to as to make them useful from a historical point of view. Let’s not glorify this.
    - vdqtp3 5y ago
      Nothing in the article mentions anything about fresh burials.
      - mbreese 5y ago
        > Videos and photos taken by Miller and Sue show the two of them digging in the Dakotas, Mexico, South America, and elsewhere, often in remote areas. In one video, Miller—with an ear-to-ear smile—is shoving a skull into a brown bag as other bones sit nearby. In South Dakota, Miller is lying in a recently dug grave. A photo from Mexico shows a child’s casket. I’m not really going to quibble with whether or not there was a body in the recently dug grave or not. I don’t think the distinction matters. And child sized caskets aren’t exactly found in “ancient burial grounds”. A bit further down in the article… > And in one of the most disturbing shots, a Native American skull cut in half is filled with yellow apples. Until now, the FBI has never shared any of these images. “I want to dispel the notion that Don was a responsible collector,” Carpenter says. “He was not. He was a grave robber.”
indymike 5y ago
> Because they know their customers. "Elderly amateur archeologist has collection seized by FBI for doing basically what professional state sanctioned archeologists do but without state permissions" would go over like a lead balloon pretty much anywhere that isn't fairly affluent and left leaning. This story is so weird and so strange that it would have got quite a bit of attention here. Even though Indiana is a red state, there would be plenty of people that would read about an old guy that could be your neighbor that has an authentic terracotta warrior statue in his living room. So much more interesting than, say busting a ring of paddlefish poachers (which was actually front page news), or our legislature outlawing sex with chickens (actually happened).
avs733 5y ago
> Because they know their customers. As a former Hoosier you wildly underestimate the appeal of neighborly gossip to this group of 'customers'. Midwesterners TALK. More likely, no one quite understood the story or its magnitude.
Accujack 5y ago
> "Elderly amateur archeologist has collection seized by FBI for doing basically what professional state sanctioned archeologists do but without state permissions" If you think what he did is what professional archaeologists do, you have no idea what they do.

mbreese 5y ago

> So what good came out of any of this As far fetched as it may be -- I'm not sure who would do this in the first place -- this will help to dissuade any future persons from trying to do the same thing. It's not always about the current crime, but preventing the next one. But, here, it seems like this was never about prosecuting Miller. > There seemed to be little will at the Department of Justice to prosecute Miller, who was 91, for what was tantamount to property crimes The main focus of the FBI was to get the items and remains back to where they belonged. They just wanted right the wrong. Finally, the article does cover exactly what you mentioned -- that more of these "collections" will likely be discovered over the coming years as the next generation inherits them and wants to have nothing to do with them. > He expects to hear about more problematic private collections over the years as they’re handed down to younger generations more troubled by them

drewcoo 5y ago
> this will help to dissuade any future persons from trying to do the same thing How will this dissuade anyone? Evidence shows that someone else being punished does not dissuade people. And basically nothing happened to Miller except that they took away his toys. And the story was pretty much buried. If anything all of that should entice, not dissuade.
oauea 5y ago
So they took a 91 year old man's life work away from him. A collection that otherwise would most likely have never been recovered at all, and would've just been paved over.
- mbreese 5y ago
  He desecrated graves and stole skulls from remains — including from fresh burials (it’s in the article). He also manually put arrowheads into some of these skulls to make it look like that was their cause of death. And the items that would have been of archeological or anthropological significance weren’t documented or handled in such a way to as to make them useful from a historical point of view. Let’s not glorify this.
  - vdqtp3 5y ago
    Nothing in the article mentions anything about fresh burials.
    - mbreese 5y ago
      > Videos and photos taken by Miller and Sue show the two of them digging in the Dakotas, Mexico, South America, and elsewhere, often in remote areas. In one video, Miller—with an ear-to-ear smile—is shoving a skull into a brown bag as other bones sit nearby. In South Dakota, Miller is lying in a recently dug grave. A photo from Mexico shows a child’s casket. I’m not really going to quibble with whether or not there was a body in the recently dug grave or not. I don’t think the distinction matters. And child sized caskets aren’t exactly found in “ancient burial grounds”. A bit further down in the article… > And in one of the most disturbing shots, a Native American skull cut in half is filled with yellow apples. Until now, the FBI has never shared any of these images. “I want to dispel the notion that Don was a responsible collector,” Carpenter says. “He was not. He was a grave robber.”

indymike 5y ago

> Because they know their customers. "Elderly amateur archeologist has collection seized by FBI for doing basically what professional state sanctioned archeologists do but without state permissions" would go over like a lead balloon pretty much anywhere that isn't fairly affluent and left leaning. This story is so weird and so strange that it would have got quite a bit of attention here. Even though Indiana is a red state, there would be plenty of people that would read about an old guy that could be your neighbor that has an authentic terracotta warrior statue in his living room. So much more interesting than, say busting a ring of paddlefish poachers (which was actually front page news), or our legislature outlawing sex with chickens (actually happened).

avs733 5y ago

> Because they know their customers. As a former Hoosier you wildly underestimate the appeal of neighborly gossip to this group of 'customers'. Midwesterners TALK. More likely, no one quite understood the story or its magnitude.

Accujack 5y ago

> "Elderly amateur archeologist has collection seized by FBI for doing basically what professional state sanctioned archeologists do but without state permissions" If you think what he did is what professional archaeologists do, you have no idea what they do.