Theft of Caddo pottery still unsolved

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – Four days into his new job at Southern Arkansas University, archaeologist Jamie Brandon learned that 26 pieces of Caddo Indian pottery were missing from the Magnolia campus.
Four years later, he's still hoping they'll surface.
The pots, bowls and bottles were to be returned to the Caddo tribe and were being packed for the transfer, Brandon said Monday. The items had been excavated from a 1980 dig known as Cedar Grove in Lafayette County. The Army Corps of Engineers was preparing to do levee work at the site, so artifacts and remains from the Caddo burial ground were removed for eventual return to the Caddo Nation.
The collection was outside the main artifact storage space when the theft happened in the summer of 2006. The exact date is not known.
“It was in a room by itself. Apparently, the thief did not have access to the larger collection,” said Brandon, Research Station archaeologist with the Arkansas Archeological Survey at the university.
Each piece is unique in that it was made by hand, not turned on a wheel. The thief selected whole pots, not fragments or vessels reconstructed from fragments. Judging by photographs, some were in pristine condition. They date to the mid-1500s, around the time Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto was in Arkansas.
The pots, packed with food and oils, had been buried with the dead to see them into the next life, Brandon said.
“These are sacred vessels to the people in the Caddo Nation,” he said.
The pots were dug from federal land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, so the pots technically belonged to the federal government. The FBI was part of the investigation along with the Southern Arkansas University police.
Brandon said investigators have no suspect.
The pots were well-documented through drawings, measurements and photographs.
“I can literally tell you the number of millimeters between the lines on the pieces,” Brandon said.
The documentation, including an Internet posting with a detailed description of each pot, would make it difficult for the thief to move the pottery in a legitimate sale.
Brandon said if some or all of the collection is changing hands in the black market, a new buyer may not know the pottery was stolen. When that person tries to sell the pot in a legal, public sale, the fate of the collection could become known.
“If somebody stole these for their personal collection, we won't know until they pass away,” when family members may unwittingly try to sell the pieces, Brandon said.
But he said if the pottery was stolen to be sold, the chance of recovery is better.
The Army Corps of Engineers is paying to have the remainder of the collection transferred from acidic cardboard boxes and deteriorating plastic bags to archival-quality storage materials. Brandon said there are thousands of pottery fragments, larger pieces and human remains.
But he wants to be able to return the entire collection to the Caddo.
“I don't want it to fade from memory,” he said.