Arrowheads, shards and dug bottles
On this page11
Arrowheads
The one named in the exception, and only for removal from the surface of the ground, and only as against one subsection. Every other restriction still applies.
Pottery shards
An archaeological resource with no carve-out. On public or Indian lands the general prohibition applies to removing them, surface or not.
Dug bottles
Bottle digging is excavation, which is the activity subsection (a) names first. On public land that is the clearest problem in this group; on private land with permission it is a different conversation.
Age is not the test
People reason that a twentieth-century bottle cannot be archaeological. The definitions and the land status do the work, not an intuition about how old is old enough.
The commerce prohibition catches resale
Selling, exchanging or transporting in interstate commerce anything obtained in violation of state or local law is prohibited. A collection assembled casually can be unsellable.
Context is the thing being protected
An artifact removed from its context loses most of what makes it informative. That is the reason behind the statute rather than a bureaucratic preference, and it is worth knowing when deciding whether to pick something up.
Storage for these is about stability
Stone and ceramic are chemically robust and physically fragile. The container job is padding and separation rather than atmosphere, which is different from almost everything else in this property.
And the label is the collection
Where, when, on whose land, with what permission. For archaeological material that record is more valuable than the object and it is the first thing lost.
Human remains and funerary objects are a separate regime
If a find looks like it might be either, stop, leave it and report it. That is governed by its own law and it is not a collecting question at all.
Report a significant find
A site rather than a stray object is worth telling a state archaeologist about. It costs nothing, it is usually welcomed, and it is how surface finds turn into knowledge.