This was in the May.21,2001.Chatt.Times- Freepress. Artifact collecting restricted in Georgia By Anne Patterson Braly Staff Writer Artifact hunters who dig without permission on private land to search for Civil War and American Indian relics can be prosecuted under a stiff new Georgia law, state officials said. The law, which takes effect July 1, slaps artifact trespassers with up to a $1,000 fine and subjects them to as much as a year in prison. The law is designed to protect the rights of landowners concerned that artifacts were being stolen from their land and sold for profit privately or publicly through Internet sites and other venues, according to state conservation officials. Billy Cooper has lived since he was 6 years old on his 20-acre farm in Dallas, Ga., in Paulding County northwest of Atlanta. As a child, he said, he discovered that the property was once a scene of Civil War action. The Union army entrenched on one side of the property and the Confederates on another. Now, at age 66 and retired from his career as an electronics technician, Mr. Cooper said he appreciates the artifacts that remain -- mostly Minie balls and bits of military hardware. Other people also have discovered the relics and often come uninvited to hunt for them to add to their collections or sell for profit, he said. "I don't think anyone should go onto another's property uninvited," Mr. Cooper said. "I was taught as a child to respect others, and I wouldn't have a problem with having anyone cited who came onto my property without permission." For the most part, these relic hunters have gotten away with little or no punishment for the trespassing and theft, but with the new law in place it won't be so easy, Georgia conservation officials say. Sgt. Mike Commander, a conservation manager for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, spearheaded the writing of the bill. He is one of several rangers who regularly patrols an area of the Flint River near Albany, Ga., looking for wildlife law violators, including people who poach artifacts without permission. "We encounter them every weekend," Sgt. Commander said. "The current law wasn't real clear about our authority. Its intent was good, but with an increase in the number of poachers, we had the law changed. We're not going after private collections or sales, we just want to protect what we have left." Georgia state archaeologist David Crass said the drought in the southern part of the state has lowered water levels of rivers, exposing ancient archaeological sites and making access easier for relic hunters. The Flint River basin, rich in archaeological remains, has been the target of many of them, he said. "We're still working out our policies on how this law will be enforced," Dr. Crass said. "We will probably go through an education program with folks before we start enforcing it." While a law prohibited digging for artifacts on private property has been in place since the early 1990s, this new law makes it illegal to collect items from the surface without written permission from the property owner. "This law clarifies existing codes," Dr. Crass said. "We have a lot of property owners who want to be good stewards of the archeological evidence. This law provides a tool for those who want to be good stewards to do that." Chuck Winchester, park manager of Pickett's Mill Battlefield State Historic Site in Paulding County, said preservation in Northwest Georgia is extremely important. "Most Atlanta campaign sites have been heavily looted," he said "The sites are especially fragile as they capture a brief period of time -- a day or a week in history. If they haven't been picked over, sometimes you can reconstruct them, sometimes down to the specific people involved. But when people go on to these sites with metal detectors, you lose the artifacts that give you the movement of what happened." E-mail Anne Braly at [email protected] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/