A former superintendent of Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa has pleaded guilty to theft of artifacts from the site, and has agreed to pay $108,000 in restitution, according to the National Park Service.
Thomas Munson also agreed to make a public apology and has been sentenced to a year of home detention and 100 hours of community service, according to a release.
Mr. Munson came under investigation in 2011 after a former employee alerted the current superintendent to the removal of the remains, the release said. While Mr. Munson returned some of the remains that year, investigators later found others during a search of his home. Some are estimated to be more than 2,000 years old.
Area tribes found the looting particularly egregious.
"These are people," said Iowa's state archeologist John Doershuk, "and there are living peoples who care deeply about these remains, just as most modern Americans would about their ancestors."
The monument protects more than 200 prehistoric mounds that help tell the story of early inhabitants of the area. They built the mounds as burial tumuli for their dead, or for other purposes yet unknown. A number of mounds were built in the shapes of animals and birds. Members of area tribes consider the mounds sacred. Munson served as the monument's superintendent for more than two decades.
Comments
I would hazard a pretty good guess that any NPS Cultural Resources staff member, whether archeological, curatorial, or other discipline.... winces when this affair is mentioned, and prays to whatever gods and goddesses that they never get tainted by such a snafu.
"[M]ore than meets the eye" indeed. This is a symptom of how NPS has for decades used the Midwest Region as a place to put incompetence out to pasture. There are many dedicated and incredibly talented staff in Midwest Region but the concentration of bad apples is not representative of NPS as a whole.
What most fail to understand about the mounds that were "desecrated" by the construction of the boardwalks is that the entire area had been plowed and farmed for nearly 100 years before the boardwalks were built. The entire area that the parking lot and visitor center sits on was once covered in mounds. It was only through the recent use of ground penetrating radar that any remnants of these mounds was detected. These news articles always make it sound like the NPS rolled in with bulldozers, and leveled obvious mounds to make these walkways. Should we tear down the visitor center and remove the parking lot as well?
are you sure you are not 12!? These Human remains didn't belong to him! These are the ancestors of the Native Americans, to whom these remains are worth a hell of alot more than that the price tag of $500 dollars you pulled out of your sorry arse! Instead of defending this sorry, thieving excuse for a man! He's just a spiteful little B**ch!
Well the go dig up your own ancestors then, or better yet, let your worst enemy, who's has murdered your whole family dig up there remains and put them in a museum in someplace far away. And when they are ordered to give them back to you, they take the weasley way out and spirit them away in garbage bags and proceed to hide them somewhere secret for 20 years. These remains have nothing to do with the American public! These are not your ancestors, so who gives a shit what you would do with your own ancestral remains. Why should the Native Americans have to suffer because you have no sense of the sacred or respect for the dead of other people, let alone your own!