The FBI has seized thousands of Native American, Russian, Chinese, and other cultural artifacts being kept in the home of an amateur archaeologist in Indiana — something of a real-life Indiana Jones, with less fantasy and more acquisitions — about 35 miles outside of Indianapolis, reports Indianapolis' RTV6. The 91-year-old collector, Don Miller, has reportedly created a homemade museum out of the artifacts that he's been gathering for about 80 years, some of which may have been collected improperly.
From shrunken heads to arrowheads
The Associated Press reports that the FBI has not said whether it believes that Miller has broken any laws, and that the laws governing the proper collection of cultural artifacts are very complex. The FBI reportedly hopes to catalog and repatriate the artifacts.
Some of the items in Miller's collection include human skulls, shrunken heads, hundreds of arrowheads, a rifle supposedly used at Custer's last stand, a chunk of concrete supposedly from the bunker that Adolf Hitler committed suicide in, and a fossilized crocodile skull, according to the AP and The Indianapolis Star. Miller, who was reportedly part of the project to build the atomic bomb in 1945, apparently did not keep his amateur museum a secret and even took schoolchildren on tours of it. RTV6 reports that the FBI has been communicating with Miller for several months, and that it may take its approximately 100-person team of agents several days to work through the collection in Miller's home.