Site Preservation 101
12/06/2019
A gentle reminder, Dear Reader, ICYMI the first time:
Please embiggen this photo by clicking on it. What you see is a recently-built, recently-used fire pit someone erected when they visited an archaeological site located on public land. They pulled stones out of a 1000-year-old pueblo wall to build up their fire ring nice and neat. Baffling, how often this happens around here and around the world, so following are some protips for campers visiting sensitive sites:
- Do not build a campfire right next to a 1000-year-old pueblo wall. (Fire and soot damage the walls and the archaeological integrity of the site.)
- Do not use the stones of a 1000-year-old pueblo wall to build a fire ring. (We all realize humans have spent the past several thousand years pulling down handy ancient wall stones to repurpose them [see, e.g., the white quartz stones of Newgrange used by farmers throughout the area to fence in their livestock], but be a bold trendsetter and build your fire ring without stones - or at the very least use stones that have already been blackened by someone else's campfire and are not part of a wall.)
- Better yet:
- If you absolutely positively must have a campfire, use one of the fire rings someone else has already built instead of building your own just a few feet away. (Think of the time and energy you'll save by not pulling stones out of a wall and hauling them to a different spot!)
- Even better:
- Do not build a campfire. Because that would be great.
- (What, a Coleman stove doesn't meet your standards?)
/s/ webmaster
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