Earlier this year, the William Siegal Gallery offered for sale, for $250,000, a pristine, prehistoric Anasazi cotton shoulder wrap — one of several found sealed in an urn.

Although Siegal specializes in prehistoric items from Latin America, he said he agreed to handle the North American textile because it had been found on private land, its provenance was impeccable and its sale met all requirements of the myriad of laws regulating antiquities.

But last week Siegal declined to discuss the wrap in detail because of the government's recent crackdown. Like most Santa Fe antiquities dealers, Siegal expects federal agents will be closely watching this weekend and next week's rounds of auctions and shows of antique tribal arts.

"Especially because it's out of my hands and it's gone, I just don't want to discuss that," he said. "I want to be as open and forthcoming as I can, but in this climate, you're just asking for trouble."

June's raids on collections and the arrests of two dozen people — including Stephen Shrader of Santa Fe, who subsequently killed himself — on charges of illegal antiquities trading have cast a pall over dealers and collectors during their busy week in Santa Fe.

Even Jim Baca, the Clinton administration's director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the chief agency involved in the two-year investigation, said he believes the recent raids went too far.

"If people are taking items from federal land, they're thieves," he said. "There's still a lot of this stuff going on. ... They were digging up dinosaur bones all over state trust lands when I was land commissioner. ... But the one thing I would say is I think (government agents) have to be a little more discreet on how these arrests are made. When they go in with SWAT teams and all this kind of stuff, that's over the top. It's just law enforcement out of control."

Collectors and dealers say the raids signal a new, more aggressive interpretation of laws on antiquities: Statues originally intended to apply to human remains in federally funded institutions have been extended to private collections with cultural artifacts that some tribal members say should not have left the tribe — kachina masks, tablitas, shields, kilts, rattles, even kachina dolls. Proving items were acquired before laws regulating their sale increasingly falls to the seller rather than the government. Just being 100 years old — even objects clearly made for trade — can trigger provisions. Even the private-land exemptions are being questioned.

Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association president Arch Thiessen, a retired Los Alamos physicist who sells Indian jewelry online, said the changes are the product of political pressure on government agencies and politicians by a coalition of American Indians, archaeologists and others.

"There's a set of people who manage to get themselves on the U.S. government committees who are activists and they're saying, 'No. you shouldn't collect old things ... You've got to give them back to the tribes,' " he said. "They also are in the majority on committees that advise the U.S. State Department for import-export, and they're also saying the same thing about those things."

The association will host Santa Fe lawyer and art-law expert Kate Fitz Gibbon and tribal-art dealer Christopher Selser, a former president of the group, at the First Presbyterian Church on Tuesday as the 31st Annual Invitational Antique Indian Art Show gets under way at the nearby Santa Fe Community Center.

Selser is one of four Santa Fe dealers whose homes were searched and items seized in early June. None of them has been charged with a crime. Selser said he has been notified he is the target of a continuing investigation. This is the second time he has encountered a legal problem with laws regulating antiquities. In 1982, FBI agents seized a pre-Hopi ceramic from him in New York City where he was living at the time. Selser said he was not charged, and the man who sold him the illegal ceramic made good on the deal by letting him pick from other wares.

"They just shot a cannon shell across our bow, and the next one is going to sink the boat," he said of the June raids. "That, of course, is the message the government wants to send. So I don't want to make everybody upset and totally anxious, but, clearly, at the same time, I do think the government is sending a message: They've raised the bar."

Selser said some of the rules regarding antique cultural artifacts need to be changed. "Some good things can come out of this," he said. "I just wish that there wasn't this feeling of kind of being exploited for political purposes or political ends. The Indians are not going to see hardly any of this stuff ever again. It is a gesture to them, obviously, because they don't want people out there digging up the burials of their ancestors. Who would? I wouldn't."

Nevertheless, Selser is outraged at what he sees as an unfair attack on him, his fellow dealers and his industry in general. "They've made it into this big circus event," he said. "It's become a big media event. The whole thing is about the size of the event and the message and therefore getting the press to pick it up and publish it over and over again. They've made it into a huge ... It's Michael Jackson."

Fitz Gibbon said she will outline laws regulating excavation of human remains and artifacts on federal or Indian land, items with feathers or other parts of migratory birds or endangered animals, and items used for sacred ceremonies and considered part of the cultural patrimony of tribes. In addition, she will discuss other countries' laws on cultural antiquities, U.S. treaties ratifying those laws and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization conventions.

The danger of more aggressive enforcement, Fitz Gibbon said, is that it might make people reluctant to share cultural items with others. "There is a value of owning art and in sharing it with your neighbors and your family," she said. "Art is not something that just sits there like your refrigerator. Art is something that talks back to you. It gives you back something. You engage in a dialogue with art whether it's contemporary art made yesterday or ancient art made a thousand years ago. ...

"That learning experience is something we offer children through our museums and our educational system, and it can only happen when there is access, when every culture in the world is represented in our museums. That's our basis for communications and I think that's something that's incredibly dangerous to lose sight of because it not only damages our educational future, but it also puts the United States in a position of isolationism and failure of understanding with the rest of the world."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.

ANTIQUITIES AND THE LAW

What: Update on international and federal statues regarding antiquities by the Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association.

Who: Attorney and art law specialist Kate Fitz Gibbons and ATADA's former president Christopher Selser.

Where: First Presbyterian Church, 208 Grant Ave.

When: 8:30-9:30 a.m. Tuesday

Admission: Free and open to the general public