Looting and artifact trafficking are not exclusively problems of the colonial past. Many sites that were excavated centuries ago continue to be threatened today.

This project is not an X-marks-the-spot treasure map.

I have followed Cecilia Smith’s “Ethics and Best Practices for Mapping Archaeological Sites” in obscuring the specific locations of colonial excavation sites.

Smith explains that “current evidence points to local knowledge networks, rather than academic data, as being the source for terrestrial site locations for looters.” Nevertheless, “archaeologists are ethically bound, and often also legally bound, to respect the cultural importance of a site by obscuring or not disclosing its coordinates.”

This is called geomasking.

Colonial treasure-hunting records can be very specific about the dimensions of an excavation pit or the weight of an artifact, but they are usually less precise about the site location.

“In the outskirts of such-and-such town or valley,” the records often say, or “Within the jurisdiction” or “in the mountains of this province.”

In most cases, I place the pin identifying each excavation site on the center of the nearest toponym.

For more on geomasking, see: Cecilia Smith, “Ethics and Best Practices for Mapping Archaeological Sites,” Advances in Archaeological Practice 8, no. 2 (2020): 162–73.

If you have any concerns about this project and its potential to facilitate looting, please don’t hesitate to contact me: jbaron4@ur.rochester.edu.