A Colorado couple indicted along with 23 others in Utah as part of an investigation into illegal trafficking of ancient Puebloan artifacts have turned over an extensive relics collection to federal authorities, pending further legal action against them.

Vern and Marie Crites, indicted June 10 for allegedly violating multiple felony laws protecting American Indian antiquities from looters, on Wednesday morning voluntarily surrendered a collection that court papers say includes prayer sticks, fire sticks, a bone scraper and "cloud blowers," the ceremonial pipes that Hopi and their ancestors used in prayer offerings.

"BLM special agents, archaeologists and curators are at the Crites' residence in Durango [Colo.] today," Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman, said Wednesday. There they loaded item after item into several moving vans.

The Criteses' Salt Lake City attorney, Walter Bugden, and federal prosecutors negotiated the handover, but that doesn't necessarily indicate a coming plea deal.

"This does not change the status of their prosecution," Rydalch said. "The indictment is still pending."

Bugden did not immediately return a call requesting comment.

During the investigation -- which employed an undercover operative identified only as "the Source" -- Vern Crites, 74, reportedly said his collection was gathered during the past 50 years.

A search-warrant affidavit, which covered a year of contact between the Source and four defendants, focused on Crites' alleged and known activities as an excavator, buyer and seller of Four Corners artifacts. The document said the Criteses displayed their business cards at the historic Strater Hotel in Durango. Artifacts stuffed their home's main entrance, a basement and a special collection room.

The Criteses were indicted on a total of seven felony counts, each carrying a possible $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. The indictment included two other suspects, Richard Bourret, of Durango, and Steven Shrader, of Santa Fe, N.M.

Shrader shot himself to death in Illinois on June 18. James Redd, a Blanding physician also indicted on a felony charge, had killed himself a week earlier.

During a Sept. 20, 2007, tour of the Crites home, the Source, viewed a large collection of Indian artifacts in the home's basement.

Crites told the Source he would be willing to sell his entire collection -- including a cache of Abajo pottery Crites valued at $50,000 -- discussed his antique-sales business and stated that he had made half-million-dollar sales to each of two major pottery collectors.

The affidavit says Crites told the Source federal agents had raided his home in 1985 and confiscated artifacts and business records, but missed a safe. In it, Crites told the Source, was an item that would have gotten him into a lot of trouble: an eagle he and his son had found and then tacked its claws to a board to dry.

Crites later told the Source there were "burial sites that had not yet been dug" and that he wanted the Source to return with him to the area, identified in court papers as public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management in San Juan County, to excavate the graves.

On Sept. 14, they went back to the graves, along with Bourret. Using shovels and rakes, they dug into an ancient Puebloan burial mound. As they piled dirt onto a blue plastic tarp, they uncovered a human skull.

Bourret picked up the skull and put it back in the hole, court documents say, then he, Vern Crites and the Source folded the tarp and funneled the dirt back into the hole. There wasn't quite enough to cover the damage.

Crites lamented a lost opportunity, saying he "wished that fella had still been intact, the skeleton, I mean."

The three were being watched. The Source wore an audio-video transmitter and a surveillance team of BLM special agents was observing from nearby.

Earlier that day, Crites and Bourret, sitting in the Source's hotel room in Cortez, Colo., fretted about where to park their truck. Crites said they were probably being paranoid, the affidavit states, but Bourret said it was better to be paranoid when doing something illegal.