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RENO, Nev. - Lawyers for two men accused of looting American Indian artifacts said that the real culprit is the U.S. Forest Service because it failed to mark the site on the edge of Reno as culturally significant.

Federal prosecutors urged a U.S. District Court jury to hold the two men responsible for stealing three boulders with artwork etchings that tribal leaders say are priceless and more than 1,000 years old.

But the defense lawyers said John Ligon, 40, Reno, and Carrol Mizell, 44, Van Nuys, Calif., removed three boulders with the petroglyphs from national forest land and placed them in Ligon's front yard to protect them from an encroaching subdivision.

"He would have never taken them and displayed them in his front yard if he thought they were government property," said Scott Freeman, Ligon's lawyer.

"Ignorance is a legal excuse in this case," he said in opening arguments before U.S. District Judge Howard McKibben.

A federal grand jury indicted Ligon and Mizell in October on charges of unlawful excavation of archaeological resources and theft of government property in violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

"Not only are persons who commit such crimes destroying the cultural heritage of Native Americans, but they spoil the opportunity for everyone to enjoy these resources in their natural environment," Dan Bogden, U.S. attorney for Nevada, said at the time.

The crimes carry potential maximum sentences of more than 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Among other things, the drawings depict an archer shooting an arrow at a bighorn sheep, a wheel, a lizard and a human figure.

Prosecutors said they would present witnesses who will testify that Mizell was aware that the petroglyphs were culturally significant artifacts protected under federal law.

But defense lawyers attacked the credibility of one of those witnesses, Matthew Crudo, who testified he once visited the site with Mizell and explained to him "it was a registered site."

Crudo, 23, a Reno mechanic, told an investigator for the defense team that he could not be 100 percent sure that he was present at the same time there with Mizell. But he testified in court that he was confident they were present together.

"I'm absolutely positive I was in the back of the pickup truck," Crudo said after Mizell's lawyer, David Houston, suggested he was committing perjury.

"I am telling the truth," Crudo said. "Things have hit my mind and I remember."

The site is located on Peavine Peak within a few hundred yards of backyards in a neighborhood in northwest Reno where hundreds of new homes are scheduled to be built this year.

"There are times people will take artifacts knowingly to sell on the black market. ... loot or raid or rob a site of antiquities for the purpose of knowingly taking artifacts to their home or to a secret place where they and they alone can view it," Houston said.

"This is not that kind of case," he told the jury.

"The event was precipitated by the desire of Mr. Mizell to protect these rocks, to avoid having these rocks lost, these boulders bulldozed, to avoid having the developers literally chew them up and spit them out," Houston said.

Although the Forest Service has posted a series of small boundary markers near the site, the defense lawyers said the agency has decided against posting signs at the petroglyph site since the Smithsonian Institution first formally recognized it in 1983.

That decision was reaffirmed several times in recent years despite concerns raised about the threat of vandalism or damage from development, they said.

"The government has put the blame on somebody else because the government didn't manage it properly for 25 years," Houston said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Gifford said the Forest Service decided, in consultation with tribal leaders and state historians, that the best way to protect the petroglyphs was not to mark the site.

In some cases, federal agencies post signs to designate the location of petroglyphs or Indian artifacts but those are typically in high-traffic areas where people likely will see them anyway, Gifford said.

"This is an area where, unless you knew where to go, you are not going to find these petroglyphs unless you stumble onto them," he said.

William Dancing Feather, cultural resources coordinator for the Washoe Tribe, said the tribe recommended to the Forest Service about a year ago that no signs or fencing be placed at the site.

Terry Birk, an archaeologist for the Forest Service, said the agency agreed that such a move could increase the threat of damage to the site.

"It is my contention that signing or fencing it would draw increased visitation and potential to the petroglyphs," Birk testified.

Gifford said the government does not have to prove a motive in the case.

"The question is, did the defendant know or should he have known they were an archaeological resource?" he said.

"It is not illegal to pick up an arrowhead when you are out hiking. But there is a big difference between an arrowhead and Native American artifacts that are well over 1,000 years old etched on a 300-pound boulder," he said.

Courtesy Associated Press.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Federal prosecutors in the Four Corners states began a 90-day amnesty in late May for people with illegally obtained ancient Indian artifacts, such as pots or stone tools.

Looters or buyers of artifacts can return them by Aug. 18, "no questions asked," said U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico. Federal prosecutors in Arizona, Colorado and Utah also are taking part in the amnesty.

Looting ancient sites has been illegal since 1990, when a federal law was enacted protecting sacred objects and sacred places on federal and Indian land. Objects gathered before the law was enacted are exempt.

Many amateur collectors who went pot-hunting years ago now realize it is wrong, said David Phillips, curator of archaeology at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.

"You don't take something that doesn't belong to you," Phillips said.

The artifacts people take are one-of-a-kind and important to the cultures that created them, Iglesias said.

"Without their recovery, the tribes may not be able to practice ceremonies or continue teachings of their forefathers," he said at a news conference at the university.

"People think we can simply replace them," Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma, director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, said of Hopi sacred items sold on the black market. "But the deities are living in them. These are living entities to us."

Amnesty is being offered to "secure safe return of the objects and to separate the intentional wrongdoer" from those who may not know collecting certain artifacts is illegal, Iglesias said in a statement.

Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton said that the amnesty in that state technically applied only to those who turn in items specified by the state's tribes. But he added that "innocent owners" who did not realize their wrongdoing will not be prosecuted.

According to the National Park Service, reports of archaeological thefts have dropped in recent years, from a high of 1,706 in 1998 to 533 in 2001, the most recent reporting period available. Prosecutions, meanwhile, have risen: There were 230 prosecutions a year on average from 1999 to 2001, nearly four times the average for the previous 14 years, officials said.

Federal agencies report nearly 400,000 known archaeological sites on their lands, but also say they have inspected less than 10 percent of the land for such sites, said Francis McManamon, a Park Service archaeologist.

Courtesy Annanova.