Self-taught archaeologist has life's work impounded

UPDATE:

PIERRE-- A Fort Pierre man who pleaded guilty in federal court to trafficking in archaeological resources has been sentenced to eight months in federal prison.

KCCR says 61-year-old Scott Matteson will be on supervised release for three years following his prison term.

Matteson was accused of illegally taking and trading American Indian artifacts and old military items dug up on public land and Indian land along the Missouri River.

Court documents say the items ranged from stone tools to cannon balls.


From the Rapid City Journal:

Sentencing is scheduled Sept. 13 for a Fort Pierre man who pleaded guilty in federal court to trafficking in archaeological resources.

Sixty-one-year-old Scott Matteson faces a maximum prison sentence of five years.

He was among five men charged in a federal indictment with illegal taking and trading of American Indian artifacts and old military items dug up on public land and Indian land along the Missouri River. The other four defendants also pleaded guilty in plea agreements with prosecutors.
I've known Roy the Boy (that's what Kris called him when she introduced us in the old house in Brookings) for thirtysome years. He's a Peckerville boy. His dad gave him a collection of pre-settlement artifacts, some from long before the Archaic Period. Stone hammers, atlatl points, some arrowheads, all of which collected within the provisions of the Antiquities Act. It stoked a great curiosity in Roy.

He walked countless cornfields and pastures with permission throughout South Dakota and the United States. His collection swelled and his archaeological knowledge grew vast enough to consider becoming a doctoral candidate; an authority on the anthropology of the Clovis People he believes that the history of humans in the New World is far older than many university-trained scientists do.

Then he traded for some artifacts not knowing that they had been gathered on public ground by a person being watched by Federal officers. Roy's life's work has been impounded and may never be seen by human eyes again. He has never made a dime from it and if he fights his charges in Federal court, he will lose his opus to lawyers anyway. So he copped a plea.