Unearthed War Relics See Battle Again

In their defense, relic hunters say that many of the places they dig have been ploughed for 140 years and that artifacts have been scattered. "There is no context," said Diggin' in Virginia organizer John Kendrick -- a point some archaeologists dispute.

If these sites are so important, relic hunters say, why haven't archaeologists staked their claim?

Phillip Dean manages Fort Powhatan, which has been in his family since the 1950s. Dean said rent from a relic hunting group helps pay the property taxes. He said no one in his family knows much about the history there, nor have archaeologists ever contacted them about it.

"You'd think folks like that would pool their resources and buy some property if they thought it was that important," Dean said. "This country was founded on private property rights, as I recall."

Archaeologists argue that there's not enough money to excavate every important site. And as development in the Washington area pushes farther out, most archaeologists spend their workdays in a race against time, excavating what they can or, more commonly, doing the mundane work required by federal and state law to see whether anything's in the ground at all before a road is built or a shopping mall goes up.

So if archaeologists can't dig, they want the undisturbed sites left alone. To relic hunter John Craig, that sounds nuts. "This stuff's just rotting in the ground," he said.

Matthew Reeves, director of archaeology with the Montpelier Foundation, found some middle ground when he began to work with relic hunters to excavate parts of Manassas National Battlefield Park and other projects. Still, he said, the magnitude of the big digs left him "horrified."

The owner of Brandy Rock Farm in Culpeper County, where thousands of artifacts were mined on the Diggin' in Virginia hunt, is a psychiatrist. "Archaeologists and relic hunters both love history so much," said Merrill Stock, watching the diggers crowd for a better view of the prized Mississippi plate. "I don't understand why there has to be so much controversy."

One day in the summer of 1863, a Confederate soldier from Mississippi left behind his prized belt plate, worn only by elite members of the state militia, in a camp on Brandy Rock Farm.

We will never know why.

Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.