I finally stopped calling looters the bad guys after a talk with a retired archaeologist in Santa Fe

Logan Martinez · 2026-09-23T23:30:05.068534+00:00

I sat next to this 71 year old guy at a diner in Santa Fe who spent 30 years digging in the Four Corners, and he told me most of the pottery on the black market was pulled out of sites by families who needed money, not by organized crime rings. He said the blame lands on collectors like us who pay $2,000 for an ancestral pot and never ask where it came from, which hit hard because I own three. So what do you all think, should museums and collectors be treated as the real problem, or does that let looters off the hook?

Free To Speak

Loading…

I finally stopped calling looters the bad guys after a talk with a retired archaeologist in Santa Fe | Archaeology Discoveries - Free To Speak