Case Tests Law on Study of Indian Graves : Archeology: Two scientists are accused of illegally excavating human bones. Colleagues rally to their side.

Known largely as the home of the National Date Festival, this small desert town became the battleground Tuesday in an unprecedented court case against two archeologists accused of illegally excavating a pound of human bone fragments.

Scientists from around the state, some passing out bumper stickers saying “Archeology Is Not a Crime,” gathered at Indio Municipal Court in support of colleagues David Van Horn and Robert Scott White and their embattled field of research.

“It’s an attack worldwide, whether it’s Khomeini in Iran or fundamentalists in Georgia, this is against science,” said Roy Salls, assistant director of the Center for Public Archeology at Cal State Northridge.

The case against Van Horn and his associate White, both of Riverside County, marks the first use of a 2-year-old state law making Indian grave desecration a felony. It also embodies a national debate over the treatment of American Indian bones as objects of research rather than sacred remains entitled to reburial.

Van Horn claims that he and White have become scapegoats because of his outspoken views on the subject. A sharp-tongued critic of efforts to return artifacts and bones to their Indian descendants, Van Horn lost a 1986 civil suit filed by the state attorney general after he refused to surrender two milling stones found with a pair of prehistoric skeletons.

If convicted of the criminal charges, he and White could face three years in state prison. But Richard Erwood, a Riverside County deputy prosecutor, said Tuesday that he would seek only probation for the two scientists.

Despite Van Horn’s claims, the soft-spoken Erwood has maintained that he is only trying to enforce the law, not make history.

Defense attorneys, meanwhile, said they hope to convince Municipal Judge B. J. Bjork that the charges should be dismissed by the end of this week’s preliminary hearing and not carried over to Superior Court for trial.

“God help us if these two are found to be crooks,” said Donald W. Jordan Jr., White’s lawyer.

The case stems from a small dig in the nearby desert resort of Indian Wells where in May, 1989, White unearthed charcoal, pottery shards and about a pound of bone chips, none larger than a quarter.

Van Horn’s firm, Archeological Associates, had been hired to survey the site for any significant artifacts before it was developed into a housing tract.

A key point in the case is whether the bone chips should have been identified as human remains in the field or whether, as the defendants contend, they needed to be examined by an expert in a lab.

White brought all the material back to Van Horn’s Sun City office, and Van Horn sent the bone fragments to a specialist at UCLA, where they were identified as human. Erwood says the pair should have realized they had found a cremation site and contacted the county coroner, the first step under laws protecting Indian graves.

Much of the testimony Tuesday dispelled any romance about archeology, describing instead how material from the dig was painstakingly placed in small plastic bags and labeled, and how White and a volunteer assistant sifted through sand and artifacts, laboring in 100-degree heat.

Defense attorney Jordan later turned up the heat in the courtroom with a brutal cross-examination of a San Diego archeologist who testified that he was able to tell the bone fragments were human by their shape and burn marks.

Under Jordan’s questioning, witness Brian Smith acknowledged that he had little, if any, direct field experience, especially with cremation sites.

Jordan and defense attorney Gary Scherotter also succeeded in showing that Smith and another witness for the prosecution, UC Riverside archeologist Bruce Love, compete with Van Horn for consulting contracts. Love testified that Van Horn had been told about two earlier discoveries of cremation sites within a mile of his dig--evidence that Van Horn might have expected to find human remains. But the defense claimed he never received supporting documentation, even though he asked for it.

The hearing could conclude this afternoon.