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> 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 fut

> 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.”
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    where does it mention fresh burials? I just rechecked the article and still missed it.
- Accujack 5y ago
  You're mistaken that it being "recovered" now means it was preserved. Much of the information that could have been gained from leaving the items where they were found was lost as soon as this guy dug stuff out with a shovel and took it with him. Most of the information archaeologists gain isn't from finding objects and studying them, it's from mapping where they are in relation to other objects, studying residues on them, studying the environments in which they were found, and even sometimes what orientation they were buried in. This guy destroyed a huge amount of information about these items for the sake of "collecting" and helped no one but himself. He wasn't a sympathetic old man, he was a criminal that was never prosecuted.
- gopher_space 5y ago
  I own a stone tool with representational carvings that would have been incredibly valuable to scientists had my great-grandfather not uncovered it by sluicing down a mountainside looking for artifacts. It's the only known example of a minor art style in a specific location, and it's completely worthless because some dude pulled it out of the ground and put it in a box.

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.”
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  where does it mention fresh burials? I just rechecked the article and still missed it.
Accujack 5y ago
You're mistaken that it being "recovered" now means it was preserved. Much of the information that could have been gained from leaving the items where they were found was lost as soon as this guy dug stuff out with a shovel and took it with him. Most of the information archaeologists gain isn't from finding objects and studying them, it's from mapping where they are in relation to other objects, studying residues on them, studying the environments in which they were found, and even sometimes what orientation they were buried in. This guy destroyed a huge amount of information about these items for the sake of "collecting" and helped no one but himself. He wasn't a sympathetic old man, he was a criminal that was never prosecuted.
gopher_space 5y ago
I own a stone tool with representational carvings that would have been incredibly valuable to scientists had my great-grandfather not uncovered it by sluicing down a mountainside looking for artifacts. It's the only known example of a minor art style in a specific location, and it's completely worthless because some dude pulled it out of the ground and put it in a box.