GREENSBORO N.C.
Mark Willis and several of his friends have spent decades
combing the fields, stream banks and woods north of Greensboro
in search of lost treasure.
Their quest, which borders on an obsession, doesn’t involve
glittering gems, tidbits of precious metal or anything else of much financial
value. In fact, the average person would be hard-pressed to distinguish some of
their more significant finds from the average field stone.
But the Native American artifacts they have collected tell
rich stories of vanished cultures spanning 10,000 years on a Piedmont landscape
that has undergone massive changes, perhaps none more dramatic than those of
the past five or 10 years.
“This is just some of what we’ve got,” Willis
said, gesturing toward a huge display including arrowheads, cookware and pieces
of what could be a child’s burial urn. “We have thousands of things. We
can’t bring it all out, it’s so much.”
But their hobby is threatened by all the development in the
area, including a proposal to put a 775-home, golf-course community amid one of
their prime artifact-hunting areas.
Willis has contacted Guilford County and state officials to
suggest that before such a massive undertaking, the area be carefully surveyed
to make sure nothing of historical merit is destroyed. He is particularly
concerned about a Native American burial ground said to be on land slated for
the golf course, a tract he hasn’t checked out because it is on private land he
didn’t have permission to explore.
