Each summer, my Mackinac Island backyard gives up a few archeological treasures. The site of a former blacksmith shop, the soil is rich with historical castoffs.
Though no one else is ever vying for these finds, Craig Childs’ book “Finders, Keepers” put me in mind of how tenuous is the relationship between searchers and their finds.
Childs, author of “Animal Dialogues” and “Soul of Nowhere,” trades on his experiences of the desert southwest to frame his thesis. However, what might appear obvious to some, namely that the dead do not continue to claim their castoffs, is not as obvious as Childs navigates the ethics of archeology.
“Spitting potsherds” as a youngster, Childs graduated to “unaffiliated backcountry aficionado,” and eventually backcountry guide. All the while, Childs was honing his finding skills, while developing his keepers’ ethos.
His conclusions are derived from his own experiences, as well as the experience of others, both those Childs applauds and those he loathes. One of the latter is Jack Haralson. An insurance salesman, Harelson was also an amateur archeologist, who once dug up “a 2,000-year-old sealed torso-sized basket, heavy with objects inside.” Among the objects inside is “a mummified boy who had been about four years old when he died, and below his leathery corpse was another mummy, that of a girl about ten years old.” Harelson kept the loot and buried the mummies in his backyard. For his pains, he spent eighteen months in prison and a $2.5 million fine.
On the other side of the equation are Emil Haury and Julian Hayden, also archeologists who explored the southwest, also discovered mummified remains, but who donated their finds to science. “The distance between these two ends of the spectrum,” Childs writes, “seems like forever, but it is not.”
Guiding a reporter, who is interested in the subject, Childs confronts the questions of ethics as they search for artifacts in the Arizona desert. “I did not want to force my own ethic on her,” he states. “We want to be the first ones to bridge the gap,” he says, “clearing the dust away and letting in light.” What he understands, however, is “if we opened it, the seal would be broken. It would be forever changed.”
This, of course, is the rub. “There is a difference between finding and keeping,” Childs warns. “The two are often lumped together in one action, but there is a blink that comes in between.” This blink is the territory where Childs finds questions that do not necessarily have clearly defined answers. “We have no single agreed-upon way of treating the past,” he reasons. “Behavior varies from person to person.” This variation can be problematic, causing either derision or adulation.
Childs suggests a direction, courtesy of James O. Young, of the University of British Columbia, who believes, “Artifacts ultimately belong to the cultures that made them…if they are proven to have had a genuine, substantial, and enduring significance to the people. If they aren’t so significant, it’s finders keepers.”
