Throughout history, the traces of people who lived before have been
altered by those who followed. Even when Indians camped in places where
their ancestors had camped, they destroyed a piece of the record of
their past. In contrast with this age-old pattern of minor alterations,
however, is the potentially devastating impact of modern-day technology.
In Louisiana today, major types of land modification include energy
exploration and development, timber cutting, agriculture, urban
expansion, waterway modification, and transportation network
construction. These are all likely to disturb archaeological sites if
they are conducted without care.
[Illustration: Heavy machinery can destroy a site in minutes.]
The country’s need for oil, gas, coal, and timber has accelerated the
search for these products in the past decade. As exploration crews cut
roads into otherwise inaccessible areas, previously undetected sites are
exposed and disturbed. When heavy machinery is brought in to begin
logging, drilling, or mining, sites can be gouged or crushed in a few
seconds. Unless the crews are alert, fragile archaeological sites are
destroyed before they are even recorded. In Louisiana’s coastal areas,
oil and gas production has also affected sites. Pipelines are often laid
through piles of shells because they are more stable than the
surrounding land. Unfortunately, a great many of these piles are
man-made; they are actually archaeological sites.
Mechanized agriculture affects sites when plows turn up artifacts,
jumbling the materials. Whenever an area is cultivated for the first
time, sites may be found. In Louisiana, previously undisturbed areas
within the river valleys are now being cleared for large-scale
agriculture. Many buried prehistoric sites along old river channels
could be destroyed. Sites in cultivated fields may be damaged further if
they are plowed more deeply than in the past. Modern subsoilers can cut
three feet into the ground, disturbing even deeply buried materials.
[Illustration: This gas pipeline in southeastern Louisiana’s marsh
was laid directly through an archaeological site.]
Farmers often regard Indian mounds as troublesome when they occur in
areas otherwise ideal for plowing. If farmers do not recognize the value
of these mounds, they may have them removed. For example, a man in
Madison Parish sold the dirt from a large Indian mound on his land for
road fill. The ancient monument was removed so the land could be planted
with soybeans.
[Illustration: Dirt from this mound in Madison Parish was used for a
road foundation ...]
Population growth in Louisiana has led to rapidly expanding cities and
extended transportation networks. Modern cities are often in the same
places that Indians and early Europeans built their settlements, so city
growth is almost certain to disturb archaeological sites. As early as
the turn of the century, archaeologists were charting the destruction of
a mound group in eastern Louisiana. A city was growing up around one of
the largest groups of mounds in the Southeastern United States. In 1931,
an archaeologist wrote about the leveling of one of the mounds, a square
multi-stage one, 80 feet tall and 180 feet on each side. The dirt was
used to build the approach ramps for a bridge. Today, part of only one
mound remains, protected because of the recent cemetery on top.
[Illustration: leaving behind only a few clumps of trees.]
The destruction mentioned above has resulted from a lack of
understanding of the importance of these sites. It has taken
Louisianians a long time to realize the uniqueness and richness of their
state’s cultural heritage. While many people are now joining in the
efforts to conserve the remaining sites, a few continue to willfully
destroy them.
Some individuals dig into sites in order to find artifacts that can be
sold to antiquity dealers. These looters have demolished entire Indian
villages, stealing the story of those sites from all Louisianians. Even
if the artifacts are eventually turned over to an archaeologist, most of
the information has been obliterated. Lost are the records of where the
artifacts originally came from, the relationships of the artifacts to
each other, the samples of materials for laboratory analysis, and
usually the ordinary or broken artifacts that tell the archaeologist
much, but sell for little.
[Illustration: Looters at this archaeological site found artifacts,
but destroyed all the other information archaeologists could have
used to interpret the site.]
[Illustration: Damaged site]