Meaning currently untenable due to a modern major city being built on top of it(tenochtitlan), Religious objections(Temple Mount/Jerusalem) or technological barriers (The Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor).
Those are my 3.
What are some other interesting places that we know are there but are unlikely to be excavated any time soon?
Definitely the Temple Mount.
Boudicca’s rumored tomb that would supposedly disrupt London Underground traffic.
Much of Manhattan
Much of Atlanta
Why Atlanta?
Im assuming you are interested in what may be left of the pre-1864 city? But that city would be a very tiny section of the modern city, right? Wasn’t it basically(compared to the modern city) a small town with an important railroad junction? I guess maybe you may dig up some Union belt buckles or cannonballs. Are there other things of interest i’m unaware of?
All of Cairo and the Giza plateau.
Rome. (Sorry, guys. It’s been real.)
All of the Salisbury Plain.
Fuck, yeah. Keep Calm and Take the Bus.
There was native culture- both Creek and Cherokee- in the area, and they had some trade in gold and copper and rose-gold trinkets. (There were very rich gold veins not far north of Atlanta- first major gold rush in U.S. history.) The city was rebuilt so fast after its Civil War demolition and then when it became the capital and then when it was torn down and rebuilt every 4 hours after that and quite a lot of interesting junk under there.
Boudicca’s rumored tomb likely inspired the location of the Hogwarts Express loading, btw. (It’s between platforms 9 & 10 of King’s Cross station.)
A large scale underwater archaeology program, in the Mediterranean /Aegean, etc seas.
Each sunken ship is a time capsule, undisturbed.
[QUOTE=Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor]
Each sunken ship is a time capsule, undisturbed.
[/QUOTE]
Did you see this earlier this month?
Israeli divers find largest trove of Roman shipwreck treasure in decades
I really want access to the temple in Ethiopia that claims that they are the preservers of the Arc of the Covenant. I don’t think they really are but it may not be complete bullshit. DNA testing has confirmed that the Ethiopian people that claim to have it really are descended from ancient Jews.
They have an unusual mix of Christian and Jewish beliefs today but they are determined to protect whatever is there at all costs. Only one person is allowed to guard it per lifetime and that person can never leave the site. No one else is ever allowed to see it including the heads of the church.
“But through the centuries, Ethiopian Christians have claimed that the ark rests in a chapel in the small town of Aksum, in their country’s northern highlands. It arrived nearly 3,000 years ago, they say, and has been guarded by a succession of virgin monks who, once anointed, are forbidden to set foot outside the chapel grounds until they die.”
It isn’t so much archaeology as simply being let inside an existing building but I would pay good money to get access as would countless other people. Storming a building that might contain the Arc of the Covenant is probably not a wise move.
Alexandria. Dig the whole place up, find Alexander’s tomb.
The coastlines of the United States circa 3000-5000BC or a bit earlier. I wonder if there is something there that would settle the whole debate about how humans made it here.
Definitely Jerusalem. Move everybody out and strip the city to bedrock. The whole city, not just Temple Mount.
Didn’t he die in India?
In Babylon, in modern Iraq. His body was to be shipped back to Macedonia, but on the way it was intecepted by Ptolemy, a general of Alexander’s who had set himself up as Pharoah of Egypt. Ptolemy brought it to Egypt, presumably so that some of Alexander’s lustre would be associated with him and his heirs and, Alexander having acquired Egypt by conquest, their association with Alexander would validate their claims to rule over Egypt. Ptolemy’s successor, uninventively named Ptolemy II, built Alexander a splendid tomb in the place which is now called Alexandria.
Various prominent Romans visited the tomb, but in late antiquity people lost interest in Alexander and the tomb starts to disappear from the record. Various travellers who visited Alexander report being shown a building said to be Alexander’s tomb, but it’s not clear whether they are all being shown the same building, or whether that building, or any of those buildings, is in fact Alexander’s tomb. We now have numerous competing theories as to where exactly the tomb was and how much, if any, of it remains.
Nitpick: The Ark, if any, didn’t come to Axum until about 335 A.D. when Ethiopia converted to Christianity. (I don’t think the city of Axum is much older than that.) Before then the Ark spent eight centuries on the island of Tana Kirkos (Debra Sehel) in Ethiopia’s Lake Tana.
The reconstructed travel of the Ark (or perhaps some artifact impersonating the Ark) is interesting and plausible, but SDMB is not a venue where such things can be discussed objectively.
No it isn’t. In any case, as we all know, she’s actually buried under an even more glamorous location, a McDonald’s in Birmingham.
In a similar vein, it’s a pity that there’s no prospect of excavations under Rosslyn Chapel. Not because they would find anything. Quite the opposite. But it might help dispel some of the Dan Brown-inspired nonsense.
Seconded. Just *think *of all the things we’d discover.
That the populace of Jerusalem can be downright ornery at times?
Peevish even.
But it would solve a number of other problems, as well!