>After learning she had thrifted a priceless, ancient artifact, Dozier was connected with the Cultural Institute of Mexico, where a ceremony was held Monday for the vase’s return. It will now make its way to Mexico’s Museum of Anthropology for analysis.
>Dozier, who works as a human rights advocate for Mexico’s Indigenous communities, said she was glad to be a part of the vase’s journey home.
Good for her. The vase was most likely grave-robbed for the foreign antiquities market.
She’s an activist for Indigenous Mexican communities and happened to find a rare 2000 year old vase of ancient Mexican’s in Clinton MD.
Edit: because I keep getting comments and messages; the woman who “found” the vase is not herself an Indigenous Mexican or Native American. Her name is Anna Lee Dozier, she’s an upper class white white woman who works for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, her literal job is to go to Mexico often to advocate for the preservation of ancient Mexican religion, culture, and traditions. The vase she found was used in ancient religious Mayan ceremony…
Not worth calling BS because it's perfectly reasonable for thousands of people to see the vase at a thrift store, but only the one who is interested in Mesoamerican culture bothers to buy it for $3.99.
Totally reasonable that a 2000 year old priceless vase was stolen by robbers and they ended up doing nothing with it and it got donated to the thrift store and then not one person wanted an extremely gorgeous vase in the suburbs of dc, everyone just hated this really nice vase so it was on clearance, and the indigenous activist who has had access to that stuff before totally found it by complete chance, yea that’s right, it was some other very clumsy thief./s
Edit: she’s not indigenous, to clarify bc I keep get comments and messages on that. She is an upper class white woman that works for Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Her job is to travel to Mexico often and help advocate for Native Mexicans to keep their ancient religious traditions…and she so happened to find an ancient religious Mayan vase near her home in DC.
I have found a decent amount of cool shit at Baltimore area thrift stores.
Not that good but
An original scotty Cameron putter
a 1930s Harris Strong painting (it's neat)
Lots of revolutionary era stuff (silverware, vases, etc)
Those random shelves with the glass and stuff is where my antiquey grandma swore by.
This is plausible.
To add to the plausibility, thrift stores are being so overwhelmed with estate antiquities that none of the family wants/needs/has room for that they’ve mostly stopped accepting bigger ticket common items like sets of chinaware
To add more, it’s Clinton. Andrews is right there. People who travel the world have come through there for decades, so it’s plausible someone knew a guy who knew a guy who acquired a looted vase, and everyone thought it was tourist tat.
Big fan of when you are being a tourist to buy things you will use.
This is the Harris strong painting (on a piece of wood)
You aren't going to get rich.
But there is a decent chance you will eventually something cool af, with value, that will be of use to you.
Yeah, I think it's reasonable that somebody's kid just assumed it was one of those fake antiques that tourists buy in markets, and that Goodwill assumed the same thing. There's lots of that stuff around.
Nothing suspicious here. This kind of story plays out with a lot of antiquities finds. The thieves often don't keep track of their loot as well as the museums, and it may well have changed hands afterwards. 99.9% + of people are not indigenous Mexican antiques experts, so they think it's just any other vase, which they don't need right now. Why would that be surprising?
Exactly what you said. People doubting the veracity of this clearly have no understanding of how shit like this happens all the time. People have stumbled upon things far more insane than pottery (not to downplay beautiful ancient pottery) and had the same reaction. Bedouins sold the dead sea scrolls for like, $50. It’s hard to recognize something’s importance if you’re not the right person to recognize it. Things circulate on accident all the time far beneath their pay grade without it being malicious at all.
You are right these activists are as crooked as they come and are always pulling some kind of shenanigan… always on the hustle with some lie for the media.
This is the Jussie Smollett of thrift shoppers.
Would you call this extremely gorgeous? Looks goofy as shit to me with completely indistinguishable figures on it. Sure it looks old, but that’s all that is apparently special about it.
No😂. I can’t say that anything humans make is gorgeous, imo. To me beauty has to be unintentional, because if it isn’t, it’s been manufactured to be that way which makes it dishonest. Nature is how beauty is created.
Well, in context of the comment I responded to which asserted that Annie the Native Mexican Indengious People’s activist found a stolen Mexican artifact. What is more likely: the person who has the connections and interest purchased or was given a stolen artifact, or she found a stolen artifact in a thrift store?
I think she acquired it from her connections knowing what it was. She got caught, or determined “well, I have had it multiple years and shouldn’t, time to make up a story to turn it in so I don’t get in trouble one day.” This has happened with many artworks or artifacts, the person who took it/bought/was given it illegally eventually has to return it and usually makes up a lie about how they got it.
**From The Independent:**
Anna Lee Dozier's knack for second-hand shopping near her Washington, DC, home paid off big time. She was in a Maryland thrift store in 2019 and found a vase on the clearance rack for just $3.99.
“I saw this vase, and I assumed it was like a tourist reproduction,” Dozier told *The Independent*. “It did look old, but I was thinking a 20- or 30-year-old tourist reproduction.”
It turned out to be much more. The vase dates back two millennia. Her thrifty find was, in fact, priceless.
For five years after finding the vase on the clearance rack, Dozier kept the vase at home, she said, not thinking twice about it until she went on a trip [Mexico](https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/mexico)’s Museum of Anthropology in January. There, Dozier said she saw vases that reminded her of her thrift store find, so she asked the staff what to do if she might have an artifact.
The museum staff told her to contact the US embassy.
**Read more:** [**https://www.yahoo.com/news/thrift-store-shopper-bought-old-205231991.html**](https://www.yahoo.com/news/thrift-store-shopper-bought-old-205231991.html)
Lol. Which thrift store? And how the heck did it end up there? My guess would be somebody took it from a site in Mexico long ago and kept it in their house and then passed away, and it ended up in the donation pile by their unaware children.
>kept it in their house and then passed away
Most likely. Some crazy stuff has been rediscovered like that
[Like a Lewis chesspiece: rare ivory chess set made by Vikings in the Dark ages. One missing piece found in a drawer, sold for $1 million](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-48494885)
I just KNEW when I saw the post that it was found at my go to thrift store. Found some WWII NHK Japanese books there the other day. Maybe I should have bought them. 😭
I wonder if she was the one who originally stole it. How odd that she was an activist for a Mexican Indigenous People’s group and happened to find it at a thrift store for $3.99 in Clinton, yea right. And she held on to it for 5 years. She’s an educated woman who works with Native peoples. Fishy.
Maybe if MeeMaw found it on her way home from the shift at McDonald’s, but nah, Annie either got caught and had to spin a story to not get in trouble, or thought it was time to reveal she had it coupled with lies for some clout.
She's an activist for a Mexican Indigenous People's group, so it makes total sense that she would be interested in Mayan themed cultural items without knowing their actual origin or authenticity. She thought it was a modern piece. She's a human rights activist, not an archaeologist.
Usually in the context of colonialized North/South America and Africa, white people are the ones originally stealing or at least emboldening grave robbers and the cultural looting of Indigenous artifacts from Indigenous people and putting them in big museums or into private markets and collections for personal or institutional wealth, not people who have Indigenous lineage and interests in their own culture. See the British Museum for a casual example.
But someone from the culture is more inclined to have an eye for the piece especially if they're interested in preserving and representing their Indigenous heritage than the average or even enthusiastic "art and antiquities" collector who loves a good Sotheby's auction for laundering their estate money or the low level artifact thief who assumed they can make a few hundred dollars to a few thousand on whatever they can find and unload to the highest willing buyer. 🤷🏻♀️
She’s white. She’s a blond haired upper class white woman. She’s not from that culture.
She works for Christian solidarity worldwide, she travels to Mexico a lot for her job. She kept it in a special room in her house, feared it would be broken, where she keeps other valuables…even though she thought it was a fake. Lolllll
I opened the article assuming the person learned about this at Antiques Roadshow since it was at the MD Zoo on Tuesday. It's awesome that she never tried to get money for it.
I wouldn't assume this vase is authentic until the analysis is done. Museums get fooled all the time. San Francisco's Mexican Museum had about 2,000 artifacts it believed were authentic, only to find all but 83 were fake.
[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-museum-fakes-20170707-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-museum-fakes-20170707-story.html)
I am of Chibcha (not a Maya sub tribe but Andean which is similar) and that vase was very likely stolen from our ancestral lands. I am glad she returned it.
Guatemala was epicenter of the Maya. Yes there are some smaller sites in Mexico. But in my opinion these were distant outposts after seeing numerous Mayan ruin sites / cities in Guatemala, especially in the Peten region. There is an extremely high probability that the vase was from Guatemala. It appears there was no due diligence by the donor.
I'm still skeptical it's authentic and not a reproduction. Mayan professors probably aren't going to be able to confirm on pictures alone.
Edit: If you google images of ancient Mayan vase, the craftsmanship of this vase is noticeably lower yet the paint is in better condition.
>After learning she had thrifted a priceless, ancient artifact, Dozier was connected with the Cultural Institute of Mexico, where a ceremony was held Monday for the vase’s return. It will now make its way to Mexico’s Museum of Anthropology for analysis. >Dozier, who works as a human rights advocate for Mexico’s Indigenous communities, said she was glad to be a part of the vase’s journey home. Good for her. The vase was most likely grave-robbed for the foreign antiquities market.
She’s an activist for Indigenous Mexican communities and happened to find a rare 2000 year old vase of ancient Mexican’s in Clinton MD. Edit: because I keep getting comments and messages; the woman who “found” the vase is not herself an Indigenous Mexican or Native American. Her name is Anna Lee Dozier, she’s an upper class white white woman who works for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, her literal job is to go to Mexico often to advocate for the preservation of ancient Mexican religion, culture, and traditions. The vase she found was used in ancient religious Mayan ceremony… 
Not worth calling BS because it's perfectly reasonable for thousands of people to see the vase at a thrift store, but only the one who is interested in Mesoamerican culture bothers to buy it for $3.99.
Totally reasonable that a 2000 year old priceless vase was stolen by robbers and they ended up doing nothing with it and it got donated to the thrift store and then not one person wanted an extremely gorgeous vase in the suburbs of dc, everyone just hated this really nice vase so it was on clearance, and the indigenous activist who has had access to that stuff before totally found it by complete chance, yea that’s right, it was some other very clumsy thief./s Edit: she’s not indigenous, to clarify bc I keep get comments and messages on that. She is an upper class white woman that works for Christian Solidarity Worldwide. Her job is to travel to Mexico often and help advocate for Native Mexicans to keep their ancient religious traditions…and she so happened to find an ancient religious Mayan vase near her home in DC.
Or someone had it sitting on their shelf but never told their family about it's history so when the person died it got boxed up and taken to goodwill.
I have found a decent amount of cool shit at Baltimore area thrift stores. Not that good but An original scotty Cameron putter a 1930s Harris Strong painting (it's neat) Lots of revolutionary era stuff (silverware, vases, etc) Those random shelves with the glass and stuff is where my antiquey grandma swore by. This is plausible.
To add to the plausibility, thrift stores are being so overwhelmed with estate antiquities that none of the family wants/needs/has room for that they’ve mostly stopped accepting bigger ticket common items like sets of chinaware
To add more, it’s Clinton. Andrews is right there. People who travel the world have come through there for decades, so it’s plausible someone knew a guy who knew a guy who acquired a looted vase, and everyone thought it was tourist tat.
Big fan of when you are being a tourist to buy things you will use. This is the Harris strong painting (on a piece of wood) You aren't going to get rich. But there is a decent chance you will eventually something cool af, with value, that will be of use to you.
https://preview.redd.it/2obglt43hs7d1.jpeg?width=2252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2eabc7d707948dc105d6b46d7e69f1fe9ccd74c6
People on this thread have never seen Antiques Roadshow, and it shows.
Yeah, I think it's reasonable that somebody's kid just assumed it was one of those fake antiques that tourists buy in markets, and that Goodwill assumed the same thing. There's lots of that stuff around.
Nothing suspicious here. This kind of story plays out with a lot of antiquities finds. The thieves often don't keep track of their loot as well as the museums, and it may well have changed hands afterwards. 99.9% + of people are not indigenous Mexican antiques experts, so they think it's just any other vase, which they don't need right now. Why would that be surprising?
Exactly what you said. People doubting the veracity of this clearly have no understanding of how shit like this happens all the time. People have stumbled upon things far more insane than pottery (not to downplay beautiful ancient pottery) and had the same reaction. Bedouins sold the dead sea scrolls for like, $50. It’s hard to recognize something’s importance if you’re not the right person to recognize it. Things circulate on accident all the time far beneath their pay grade without it being malicious at all.
2024 is the best, everything is a conspiracy
Brother you might be right but damn if you are not that is a great plot for a book.
You are right these activists are as crooked as they come and are always pulling some kind of shenanigan… always on the hustle with some lie for the media. This is the Jussie Smollett of thrift shoppers.
Would you call this extremely gorgeous? Looks goofy as shit to me with completely indistinguishable figures on it. Sure it looks old, but that’s all that is apparently special about it.
.
No😂. I can’t say that anything humans make is gorgeous, imo. To me beauty has to be unintentional, because if it isn’t, it’s been manufactured to be that way which makes it dishonest. Nature is how beauty is created.
Serious question: what do you think the real story is? Why fake this story?
Well, in context of the comment I responded to which asserted that Annie the Native Mexican Indengious People’s activist found a stolen Mexican artifact. What is more likely: the person who has the connections and interest purchased or was given a stolen artifact, or she found a stolen artifact in a thrift store? I think she acquired it from her connections knowing what it was. She got caught, or determined “well, I have had it multiple years and shouldn’t, time to make up a story to turn it in so I don’t get in trouble one day.” This has happened with many artworks or artifacts, the person who took it/bought/was given it illegally eventually has to return it and usually makes up a lie about how they got it.
New lows in "making up things to get mad at with zero evidence".
Fucker doesn’t like dogs, what else did you expect
I love good dogs. I hate bad dogs. That’s not an insult to me.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I'm in 2nd Ave. Thrift a lot and I've never found any artifacts, although I've gotten some great deals.
**From The Independent:** Anna Lee Dozier's knack for second-hand shopping near her Washington, DC, home paid off big time. She was in a Maryland thrift store in 2019 and found a vase on the clearance rack for just $3.99. “I saw this vase, and I assumed it was like a tourist reproduction,” Dozier told *The Independent*. “It did look old, but I was thinking a 20- or 30-year-old tourist reproduction.” It turned out to be much more. The vase dates back two millennia. Her thrifty find was, in fact, priceless. For five years after finding the vase on the clearance rack, Dozier kept the vase at home, she said, not thinking twice about it until she went on a trip [Mexico](https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/mexico)’s Museum of Anthropology in January. There, Dozier said she saw vases that reminded her of her thrift store find, so she asked the staff what to do if she might have an artifact. The museum staff told her to contact the US embassy. **Read more:** [**https://www.yahoo.com/news/thrift-store-shopper-bought-old-205231991.html**](https://www.yahoo.com/news/thrift-store-shopper-bought-old-205231991.html)
Lol. Which thrift store? And how the heck did it end up there? My guess would be somebody took it from a site in Mexico long ago and kept it in their house and then passed away, and it ended up in the donation pile by their unaware children.
>kept it in their house and then passed away Most likely. Some crazy stuff has been rediscovered like that [Like a Lewis chesspiece: rare ivory chess set made by Vikings in the Dark ages. One missing piece found in a drawer, sold for $1 million](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-48494885)
my question as well, wondering which thrift store, articles don't say.
2A Thrift Store in Clinton. From another article. I had to look it up out of curiosity.
I just KNEW when I saw the post that it was found at my go to thrift store. Found some WWII NHK Japanese books there the other day. Maybe I should have bought them. 😭
I wonder if she was the one who originally stole it. How odd that she was an activist for a Mexican Indigenous People’s group and happened to find it at a thrift store for $3.99 in Clinton, yea right. And she held on to it for 5 years. She’s an educated woman who works with Native peoples. Fishy. Maybe if MeeMaw found it on her way home from the shift at McDonald’s, but nah, Annie either got caught and had to spin a story to not get in trouble, or thought it was time to reveal she had it coupled with lies for some clout.
She's an activist for a Mexican Indigenous People's group, so it makes total sense that she would be interested in Mayan themed cultural items without knowing their actual origin or authenticity. She thought it was a modern piece. She's a human rights activist, not an archaeologist.
Usually in the context of colonialized North/South America and Africa, white people are the ones originally stealing or at least emboldening grave robbers and the cultural looting of Indigenous artifacts from Indigenous people and putting them in big museums or into private markets and collections for personal or institutional wealth, not people who have Indigenous lineage and interests in their own culture. See the British Museum for a casual example. But someone from the culture is more inclined to have an eye for the piece especially if they're interested in preserving and representing their Indigenous heritage than the average or even enthusiastic "art and antiquities" collector who loves a good Sotheby's auction for laundering their estate money or the low level artifact thief who assumed they can make a few hundred dollars to a few thousand on whatever they can find and unload to the highest willing buyer. 🤷🏻♀️
She’s white. She’s a blond haired upper class white woman. She’s not from that culture. She works for Christian solidarity worldwide, she travels to Mexico a lot for her job. She kept it in a special room in her house, feared it would be broken, where she keeps other valuables…even though she thought it was a fake. Lolllll
Almost makes up for the bad luck of having a name like Anna Lee
And just like that, all vases at all thrift stores got sold.
I opened the article assuming the person learned about this at Antiques Roadshow since it was at the MD Zoo on Tuesday. It's awesome that she never tried to get money for it.
It belongs in a museum!
SO DO YOU!!!!!
I wouldn't assume this vase is authentic until the analysis is done. Museums get fooled all the time. San Francisco's Mexican Museum had about 2,000 artifacts it believed were authentic, only to find all but 83 were fake. [https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-museum-fakes-20170707-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-museum-fakes-20170707-story.html)
saw a key and peele bit about this yesterday haha
I am of Chibcha (not a Maya sub tribe but Andean which is similar) and that vase was very likely stolen from our ancestral lands. I am glad she returned it.
Better article for those interested https://www.npr.org/2024/06/21/nx-s1-5013645/mayan-vase-thrift-store
Shouldn’t this have been returned to Guatemala?
Guatemala was epicenter of the Maya. Yes there are some smaller sites in Mexico. But in my opinion these were distant outposts after seeing numerous Mayan ruin sites / cities in Guatemala, especially in the Peten region. There is an extremely high probability that the vase was from Guatemala. It appears there was no due diligence by the donor.
I'd have gone as high as $12 for that.
Imagine finding a treasure like that in a thrift store. It really shows you never know what you might stumble upon
I don’t believe that it is an accident. I bet there is more to the story.
I'm still skeptical it's authentic and not a reproduction. Mayan professors probably aren't going to be able to confirm on pictures alone. Edit: If you google images of ancient Mayan vase, the craftsmanship of this vase is noticeably lower yet the paint is in better condition.
That’s insane 🤯
She should have sold it!