Flawed ad: Hands off historic artifacts

By Phoebe Sweet (contact)

Saturday, May 26, 2007 | 7:10 a.m.

An otherwise innocuous commercial for a Clark County housing development sends the ill-advised message that it's OK to pocket historical artifacts such as arrowheads, conservationists and archaeologists worry.

The concern was raised by a television commercial pitching Mountain's Edge. The TV spot depicts a boy in a park, taking an arrowhead from what appears to be a fossilized woolly mammoth.

Although the mammoth replica is part of the park decor, the ad suggests that collecting artifacts anywhere is acceptable, critics say.

In fact, picking up artifacts from public land is a felony punishable by fines and jail time.

Jill DeStefano shot out an e-mail complaining immediately after viewing the commercial.

She wasn't the only one.

People raised such a fuss, Mountain's Edge developer Focus Property Group and public relations firm Purdue Marion & Associates pulled it after only two days. They say the commercial ran about half a dozen times.

Lynn Purdue, principal of Purdue Marion, said she was chagrined that public officials from the Bureau of Land Management, local city governments and the Outside Las Vegas Foundation were unhappy with the ad, because Mountain's Edge promotes history.

"Its whole theme centers on the history of the land," Purdue said. "Our intent is to celebrate and honor the beauty and history of the land. We responded responsibly the minute concerns were raised."

"No. 1 with BLM land, you're not supposed to be on it, much less picking up any artifact off it," said DeStefano, who is a member of the organization Protectors of Tule Springs Wash.

She and other preservationists work to save public lands, which they say are chock-full of fossils and other artifacts, from being developed into housing tracts.

Ironically, paleontologists have been trying to determine whether mammoths and early man coexisted in the area thousands of years ago, as the ad depicts. So if scientists do find an arrowhead atop a mammoth skeleton, the debate could be settled.

Unless, say, a kid on a bike gets to it first.

"We're trying to put together where early man was and where the ice age animals were, and if you took that piece of the puzzle and put it on your mantle, nobody really knows where it came from," said Helen Mortenson, president of the Archaeo-Nevada Society. "Unless you've got proof, all the swearing on all the Bibles in the world won't make it come true."

Mortenson said she's sure the mistake was an honest one, but wishes the BLM would run a public-service announcement to correct any false impression that taking ancient artifacts is legal.

Purdue said the commercial would soon be back on TV, minus scenes in which the boy manhandles ancient paintings on rocks and commits grand-theft arrowhead.