North Carolina: artifacts

Private land: The Archaeological Resources Protection Act and its sale ban apply only to state lands; private-land collecting is governed by landowner consent and the unmarked burial law. (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 70-15 (scope).) The landowner's permission is the baseline everywhere; North Carolina's statute says how it must be given.

State land — Permit required: Excavating, removing, damaging or defacing any archaeological resource (material remains at least 50 years old, including projectile points, pottery and bottles) on lands owned, occupied or controlled by the state requires a permit from the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; resources collected remain state property. Knowing violation is punishable by up to $2,000 and six months, each day a separate offense, plus civil penalties up to $5,000. (N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 70-12, 70-13, 70-15, 70-16.) ARPA §470ee(c) makes the interstate sale of anything taken against state law a federal offence, so a dealer in another state is bound by this rule too.

Navigable waters and submerged lands — State property: The state owns the bottoms of navigable waters and all shipwrecks, cargo and underwater archaeological artifacts unclaimed for more than 10 years; exploration, recovery or salvage requires a permit or license from the Department, which may restrict sale or retention of recovered material. No hobby exemption appears in the statute. (N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 121-22, 121-25.)

Burials: Disturbance of unmarked burials must stop and be reported to the county medical examiner (Class 1 misdemeanor otherwise); knowingly acquiring, exhibiting or selling human skeletal remains from unmarked burials is a Class H felony; disturbing interred remains or opening a repository of remains is a felony under the general desecration statute. (N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 70-29, 70-37, 70-40, 14-149.) Funerary objects are also NAGPRA cultural items under federal law and cannot be sold at all.

Sale: It is unlawful to sell, purchase, exchange, transport, receive or offer to do so with any archaeological resource excavated or removed from state lands in violation of the Act; selling human skeletal remains from unmarked burials is a Class H felony. (N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 70-15(b), 70-37, 70-40.)

This article is generated from Stratum's state table as of 2026-09-20, from the statute pages listed below. It states the rule as written; it is not legal advice. Verify locally before relying on a permit route, and treat any penalty figure as a spot-check item.

Sources

Cite this article

Stratum Strata. "North Carolina: artifacts" (Law & ethics). Stratum Strata pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-20. https://stratum.black/strata/law/archaeology-us-north-carolina. Accessed 2026-09-21.

BibTeX · CSL-JSON

@misc{stratum-archaeology-us-north-carolina,
  title        = {North Carolina: artifacts},
  author       = {{Stratum Strata}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://stratum.black/strata/law/archaeology-us-north-carolina}},
  year         = {2026},
  note         = {Law & ethics article, Stratum Strata pack 2026.09, as of 2026-09-20; sources: stratum. Accessed 2026-09-21.}
}

Citations carry the pack version and the article's as-of date so they resolve to the same text later. The facts themselves belong to the sources listed below; cite those for the science.