Long Lost Artifact Needs to Be Found and Studied

[orari]

Hi everyone. I need your kind help. Tennessee archaeology needs your kind help. For the past 7 years, I have been searching for a famous American Indian artifact that went missing in 1994. The artifact is an Ordovician limestone slab with intricate pictures incised into one of its surfaces. This artifact is called the "Madison Tablet." The story of this artifact is too long to write out here, but it is presented in significant detail on my blog at the following URL:
https://contextintn.wordpress.com/20...adison-tablet/
If you have some time, please go to the above URL, read the fascinating story about this artifact, think hard about whether you have ever seen this artifact anywhere (a friend's house, your neighbor's fireplace mantle, your daughter's room, a flea market, a museum, an artifact show, etc.). If you have any information about it, please get in touch with me at the e-mail address in the blog article. I do research on this particular type of artifact, and the story on this artifact is incomplete. Completing this artifact's story with some photographs and a more up-to-date examination of it are very important to me for both personal and professional reasons---as you will see in the blog article. I do not want to own the artifact, borrow the artifact, or tote it off to some laboratory for examination. I can do whatever photographing and examining I need to do at the owner's house under his or her watchful eyes. No problems. No risks.
This artifact was not stolen from anyone, and no legal risks are associated with owning it. It is just as safe an artifact to own as an arrowhead found in your dad's corn field. This artifact would be perfectly safe to take to any artifact show, even one with archaeology professors and federal/state cultural resource managers wandering the aisles and tables by the 100s---and asking questions about it and you answering them in full. No worries.
The thing that most concerns me is the fact that this wonderful artifact has quite literally disappeared from sight over the past 20 years. I am worried that it might have been destroyed or thrown away in a garbage can---or maybe sold and shipped overseas---never to be seen again in our country. If some collector does own it, it is hard for me to understand why the owner would be so secretive as to never take it to an artifact show or show it to any of his or her fellow collectors. I have searched hard for it over the past 7 years, talked to lots of artifact dealers and collectors in Tennessee and nationwide, arranged to have a major metro newspaper article written about it, posted it on my blog, posted it on other people's blogs, had it featured in a regional archaeology journal, set up a display table on it for the entirety of a huge G.I.R.S. artifact show in Nashville (2007). No luck at all---not even the tiniest of clues as to who might own it or where it might be located. Any thoughts or information you might have would be much appreciated? This is not "snitching on a fellow collector" because no harm would come to that collector or anyone else as a result of my research, and you will be contributing to the advancement of archaeology by helping out. If you do not want to help, then I understand. It is okay. Thanks!!!

[JoshinMO]

Read your topic and a bit on the link. Whoever was responsible for it should be asked (if alive obviously) about its whereabouts. Here is something i took from your page (The Madison Tablet disappeared from the realm of Tennessee archaeology in 1994 and has not been on exhibition or available for scientific examination for the past 20 years. Its current owner, location, and preservation status are unknown.) thats not very helpful or specific about who's care it was in or where it was, granted i didnt read everything, if theres more detailed information about the disappearance that should help tracking it down. Some folks dont want to even read this many words.
Wish you luck though and hope it soon surfaces.

[Kyflintguy]

I had read this in the blog a few months ago, very intriguing artifact and significant relic. Wish you luck in your search for it!

[orari]

Thanks Josh.  The person who found the Madison Tablet was Malcolm P. Parker, who was the Director of The Parthenon, a large art museum in Nashville.  It was retained in his personal artifact collection from the day he found it in Autumn 1968 until the day he died in April 1993. Circa 1994, his wife gifted the collection to a neighborhood friend by the name of Danny Lea.  My presumption has been that the Madison Tablet was still in his collection when it was gifted because he had a strict policy---and I do mean strict---of never selling or trading an artifact he had personally found in Tennessee.  Local collectors in the Nashville area told me that Mr. Lea gradually sold off the collection, or a large portion of it, after it had been acquired by him.  I do not know Mr. Lea's location or how to get in touch with him---and neither did the collectors I contacted.  It has been a long time.  If anyone knows Danny Lea and has contact information for him, please let me know.  Otherwise, I just have to depend on hoping the current owner will see my post above and get in touch.
But here is what puzzles me.  I told you that I grew up among the artifact collector community in Nashville.  Most of the people I knew back then are either dead or very old now.  The one thing I remember most about them is that all of them---every last one---was happy to show off and exhibit their collections to anyone who wanted to see them.  That is the case here.  Most folks find something new and post a photograph of the artifact.  Showing off a collection is part of the fun.  If the Madison Tablet still exists (and I am beginning to wonder), I am a little baffled to understand why the owner is not showing it off.  If he had been, I would figure that everyone here would have seen it at an artifact show at one time or another.  That does not seem to be the case.
Now, I know it was found in a human burial, and some people might say, "Well, if I spoke up, wouldn't that get the owner in trouble with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).  If the Feds. found out about it, they could confiscate it and arrest him.  Right?"  Wrong!!!  NAGPRA does not apply to human burials and burial furniture that were found on privately owned property.  The Madison Tablet was found on private property.  No one is going to confiscate any artifacts or arrest anyone.

[JoshinMO]

I would check the white pageslink
Or a site called people finders for daniel lea. You can get ages and past locations family members etc. Good Luck.
Also, sometimes people just stick stuff in storage, they may not realize what they have or the rarity. I hope it exists, and hasnt been trashed and hope it was never stolen. Something was stolen from me long ago and cant say i ever seen it again. Maybe something for a newspaper journalist to write about to get it in the open. :dunno: