CORTEZ, Colo. — A man who law enforcement said took 64 items from an Ancestral Puebloan ceremonial site in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument has been sentenced to just over a year in federal prison.
That’s according to a news release distributed Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which said Lonnie Shadrick Winbourn, 57, was sentenced to 12 months and one day for violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.
According to the release, Winbourn made numerous trips to the Canyons of the Ancients during spring 2017, and during that time, he discovered a ceremonial site with a large dance plaza, subterranean kiva and multiple human burials.
Prosecutors allege that Winbourn stole 64 items from the site, and when he was pulled over and arrested on an unrelated warrant on June 4, 2017, officers said they found pottery shards in his pocket and Puebloan artifacts in his backpack.
Winbourn also stole jewelry, an ax head and other tools, according to prosecutors.
Archaeologists working at the site where the items were taken have worked to restore it, and curate the artifacts.
Canyons of the Ancients is located in southwestern Colorado near Cortez, and is not far from Mesa Verde National Park.
It is considered to have the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the U.S., and according to the Bureau of Land Management, more than 6,000 ruins have been discovered so far.
There could be more than 30,000 archaeological sites in the remote monument.
People have been living there for 10,000 years, and many of its famous stone structures are 800 years old.
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