# Archaeology is Unethical **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 22, 2018, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317 "2018-10-22T02:23:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/21 "2018-10-22T07:50:42Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > None of this is science fiction. That’s all just stuff we have today, and can infer about where the technology will be in 5 years, and we’re already looking pretty damn good for having some reasonable first stabs at reconstructing basic objects through ground penetrating radar. Like I said - great tech for _finding_ things. Doesn’t get your scroll read, though. > [@](#): > > Whether we can get down to being able to detect a single molecule, through 20 feet of earth and stone, I don’t know. I do. Never going to happen. > [@](#): > > But we have [high-speed footage of a light passing through water](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtsXgODHMWk). What did it take to achieve that? Lots and lots of samples. If you take a billion samples, even from a poor quality sensor, you can reconstruct down to just about any degree of precision that you desire. You don’t really need higher quality sensors - though it helps for sure - you just need to keep sampling. Do you have _any_ idea of the kind of energy you’d have to pump into the dirt and stone to see you single molecule on the other side? And you’d have to do that not once, but billions of times. Do the maths, I’m sure it will turn out to be not very non-destructive. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/22 "2018-10-22T07:51:28Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > In fact, thinking about it, the En-Gedi scroll example counters your own argument - it was only _because it was excavated and preserved_ for further study that the scanning tech was able to be used on it in the first place - the very process you think shouldn’t happen. It \*wasn’t \*destroyed. Who know what might have happened to it had it been left in place, though. a) “If we have reason to believe that a particular location […] will be destroyed by construction/a river/etc. then it is fair to dig and extract a bare minimum of what needs to be gotten to on a fast schedule.” b) What did the parts say that were destroyed while moving the scroll from its original location? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/23 "2018-10-22T07:52:04Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I have not suggested perfection. I have suggested a moratorium on _destructive_ techniques. How are you going to do carbon dating or isotope analysis non-destructively, please? What do you think the state of archaeology would be without those 2 basic tools? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/24 "2018-10-22T07:58:11Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > a) “If we have reason to believe that a particular location […] will be destroyed by construction/a river/etc. then it is fair to dig and extract a bare minimum of what needs to be gotten to on a fast schedule.” I wasn’t referring to planned/known destruction. > [@](#): > > b) What did the parts say that were destroyed while moving the scroll from its original location? So your argument boils down to “_le mieux est l’ennemi du bien_”? That’s just the Nirvana fallacy. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/25 "2018-10-22T07:59:09Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Do you have _any_ idea of the kind of energy you’d have to pump into the dirt and stone to see you single molecule on the other side? And you’d have to do that not once, but billions of times. Do the maths, I’m sure it will turn out to be not very non-destructive. Put a large number of passive sensors around the site, picking up sounds and their echoes. However faint it may be, the sound of a bird tweeting probably penetrates the earth a few dozen feet. Wait a decade. > **[Passive radar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar)** > > Passive radar (also referred to as parasitic radar, passive coherent location, passive surveillance, and passive covert radar) is a class of radar systems that detect and track objects by processing reflections from non-cooperative sources of illumination in the environment, such as commercial broadcast and communications signals. It is a specific case of bistatic radar – passive bistatic radar (PBR) – which is a broad type also including the exploitation of cooperative and non-cooperative rada... Given high enough definition and a sufficiently large number of samples, you can reconstruct down to whatever level of granularity you want. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/26 "2018-10-22T08:06:31Z")
And \*then \*you dig it up? ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/27 "2018-10-22T08:08:27Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I feel like neither of you read the OP. > > The OP is about **data destruction** through using tools on and manhandling ancient artifacts. I did not mention nor allude to **desecration** anywhere in the OP, and I do not know how you arrived at that discussion. OK, but I thought acheologists were very careful about recording the natural state of what they find. (I used to think about archeology a lot and why its OK to dig up a 500 year old grave but not a 20 year old one. Sorry for the derail) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/28 "2018-10-22T08:18:29Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > So your argument boils down to “_le mieux est l’ennemi du bien_”? That’s just the Nirvana fallacy. And that’s the strawman argument. I have made no argument for perfection. If I tell you not to pee in your bed and to spend the extra effort walking 5 feet to the toilet, that’s not an argument for perfection, it’s an argument to not be a lazy bastard. I have fully admitted that the upper bound of sensor technology may reveal itself to top out at a level where we have to go back to digging. But we factually don’t know that to be true. While that remains the case, and particularly when we can see the quality of things we are able to detect at range and at fine granularity increasing at an exponential rate from year to year, it’s irrational to assume that we’re anywhere near to a plateau. Assuming a top level at which it will plateau is simply wrong. We can say with some amount of certainty that, for example, detecting a graviton is really really hard, because it just ignores so much matter. You need an interaction of some form in order to detect the something. But for what we’re talking about with this thread, we’re dealing with good old fashioned matter. And matter reacts with all sorts of things. There’s an infinite stream of data gurgling out of the surface of the Earth at all moments of the day and we have all sorts of things we can throw out it to fine tune that even more. Detection is purely a matter of granularity and noise. Noise can always be handled through further sampling. Granularity depends on the further refinement of machining tolerances and nano-construction - both of which we have no way to know how far they will advance or where they will top out., but we know will continue to advance for at least several decades. If you know of some limit that we can depend on, then by all means propose it. But heating up the materials is not one. There are a wide variety of signals that can be used most of them are going to be less strenuous than the simple fact of existing on Earth, with the Sun beating down. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/29 "2018-10-22T08:25:56Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > However faint it may be, the sound of a bird tweeting probably penetrates the earth a few dozen feet. Does it? > [@](#): > > Wait a decade. Right…so, a study the length of which is something only postdocs are going to have the time to do, then. Well, so much for new field archaeology PhDs, then. > [@](#): > > [Passive radar - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar) You do realise radar and reflection seismology are two different things, right? Tweeting birds aren’t going to provide _any_ kind of EM source for passive radar. > [@](#): > > Given high enough definition and a sufficiently large number of samples, you can reconstruct down to whatever level of granularity you want. I doubt that _very_ much. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/30 "2018-10-22T08:30:11Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > And \*then \*you dig it up? Not if you have reason to think that in 10 years time, even better sensors will come along and allow you to shrink your voxel size down by 16X, or add the ability to sense radioactive decay, or whatever else. I mean at some point, the risk of leaving things in the ground will start to go the other way and you’ll have a sufficiently good set of data that you know what all the data clusters are and you can take samples of the soils from the middle of each layer, and you can know exactly where every pot and column is, and dig them out preserving a layer of material around the artifact thick enough to preserve any paint or whatever that may have mixed in. At that point, preservation of the artifacts using technology rather than whatever natural process it was that preserved those materials weighs supreme. But right now, we don’t know where the objects are under the surface. We don’t know the layers of dirt that we’re going through or where they transition. We aren’t taking samples of that dirt (or very minimal). We definitely don’t have any information about how the soil was formed. We’re crushing the outsides of things, brushing flecks off the outsides of things, losing the materials mixed in with the nearby soil, etc. We really want to hold off digging until we have a fair idea of where the things we’re going for are, and can preserve them in a shell of the matter they were contained in, and until we have at least some sense of the soil composition, stored at sufficiently detailed levels for a geologist to be able to make some use of the data. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/31 "2018-10-22T08:36:25Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > You do realise radar and reflection seismology are two different things, right? Tweeting birds aren’t going to provide _any_ kind of EM source for passive radar. Yes. My point was that we do have technology to take random signals, from unknown origins, and still use signal processing to reconstruct 3D images from that. And, obviously, there is an infinite stream of random signals - be it sound, x-rays, light, gamma rays, and who knows what all else. Some of that is going into the Earth and some of it is coming out, day in and day out. Heck, some data is probably also coming from _inside_ the Earth. If you have a fair idea of where some interesting stuff is and where it isn’t, drill down 50 feet and drop some sensors at the perimeter of the area you’re interested in and let all the microtremors and belly grumbles of Earth add to your data. > [@](#): > > I doubt that _very_ much. And that’s fine. But “doubt” is not the same word as “proved”. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/32 "2018-10-22T08:38:05Z")
Nah, I’m not buying it. While I agree that every reasonable scan must be performed before a spade touches the ground, even if all your technical claims are correct - which I doubt - collecting data not the whole of archaeology. The purpose of archaeology is to study _and display._ The latter is just as important as the former. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/33 "2018-10-22T08:41:15Z")
Archaeology, like just about all things\*, can be practiced ethically or unethically. \*I just knew if I said [all things] one of you assholes would say “What about genocide? Huh smart guy?!” ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/34 "2018-10-22T08:42:11Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > And that’s the strawman argument. I have made no argument for perfection. It’s rhetoric, it doesn’t require you to _literally_ be advocating for perfection. Just that you should be advocating for something idealized and unrealistic. > [@](#): > > If I tell you not to pee in your bed and to spend the extra effort walking 5 feet to the toilet, that’s not an argument for perfection, it’s an argument to not be a lazy bastard. The people doing archaeological labwork are not doing it because they’re lazy. They’re doing it because it works. Leaving shit in the ground is being lazy. > [@](#): > > can see the quality of things we are able to detect at range and at fine granularity increasing at an exponential rate from year to year Cite. > [@](#): > > Assuming a top level at which it will plateau is simply wrong. There are natural resolution limits for any scanning technique you care to name. Also, energy limits are often tied to obtaining higher resoloutions. > [@](#): > > There’s an infinite stream of data gurgling out of the surface of the Earth at all moments of the day and we have all sorts of things we can throw out it to fine tune that even more. A lot of it is just noise and cancels out before it gets near any detection. > [@](#): > > Detection is purely a matter of granularity and noise. Nope. There are finite limits to what you can detect for each technique, and some things you’re never going to detect remotely, like individual molecule isotope weights. > [@](#): > > Noise can always be handled through further sampling. Not true. While it’s true oversampling doesn’t _increase_ noise, it doesn’t remove the noise you do have. > [@](#): > > Granularity depends on the further refinement of machining tolerances and nano-construction There are also _hard_ limits set by the wavelengths and energy of the sampling signals, whether EM or physical. > [@](#): > > If you know of some limit that we can depend on, then by all means propose it. But heating up the materials is not one. There are a wide variety of signals that can be used most of them are going to be less strenuous than the simple fact of existing on Earth, with the Sun beating down. The Sun is hardly a factor meters underground. But seismic movements and bioturbation both are. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/35 "2018-10-22T08:47:13Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Yes. My point was that we do have technology to take random signals, from unknown origins, and still use signal processing to reconstruct 3D images from that. And, obviously, there is an infinite stream of random signals - be it sound, x-rays, light, gamma rays, and who knows what all else. Some of that is going into the Earth and some of it is coming out, day in and day out. And that’s why seismic scanning works, I should know. But you can’t seismic scan individual molecules, and you never will. So let me ask you again - how are we going to do radiometric dating or isotope analysis remotely? > [@](#): > > Heck, some data is probably also coming from _inside_ the Earth. If you have a fair idea of where some interesting stuff is and where it isn’t, drill down 50 feet and drop some sensors at the perimeter of the area you’re interested in and let all the microtremors and belly grumbles of Earth add to your data. And that’s fine for _finding_ stuff…and then what? > [@](#): > > And that’s fine. But “doubt” is not the same word as “proved”. Neither is “hoping”. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/36 "2018-10-22T11:11:06Z")
I don’t care how splendiferously precise or dead-on-balls calibrated your ground-penetrating imager is, it won’t be able to reveal DNA information about a skeleton, or carbon date it, or analyse the chemical composition of that congealed residue fossilized at the bottom of a pot which give us not only exact diet information in general but also which exact years were lean or rich ; or the mere _colour_ of an item nor what’s written/painted on it. Adding to that, even if we unearth the 10th copy of the same Mother Earth statue and it doesn’t teach us anything really new (although we can still look and compare it to the others and it could tell us whether they were made by the same guy or not), that means the Mother statue can be displayed in a 10th museum somewhere on the globe, analyzed and investigated by their scientists etc… ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/37 "2018-10-22T11:38:41Z")
I believe the contention of the OP is already addressed in part in the densely settled Western countries. In Germany the majority of archeological digs are _Rettungsgrabungen_ (rescue/salvage digs) when in the course of new construction archeological remains are found - either during a preliminary archeological survey where standard in old cities, or during the UXO survey, or when excavation has already started and turned up something. In these cases whether nor not to dig the site is not a matter of discretion as the site will be destroyed by construction (at best the plans will be changed to include part of the site as an exhibit in the basement, as I have seen in a town nearby where a Roman latrine is to be seen as a museum in the basement of a parking garage). I assume much the same is the case in the other parts of the world where today‘s cities sit on layers and layers of previous cities. Archeological resources are allocated to non-discretionary digs; possible virgin sites are mostly left to future generations (with more capable technology) to explore. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/38 "2018-10-22T12:28:51Z")
It seems to me that archaeologists are very aware of this issue. I see commonly mentioned now that part of a major site is deliberately left undisturbed for future archaeologists who might have better technology and/or different questions they would want an answer to. Anyway, even though a newly discovered site of major interest will be excavated, it’s not like archaeologists have been digging up everything that could be. They don’t have enough funding to investigate more than a small fraction of what they would want to. For instance, there’s a bazillion of roman villae remains left undisturbed all around the French countryside. Future archaeologists with better techniques will just have to pick one if they’re interested in Roman lifestyle. And it’s not necessarily only minor sites, either. There’s no plan for excavating further in Herculanum, which is mostly still buried, no plan to open the tomb of the first emperor of China, no plan to dig up the whole site of Catalhoyuk, etc… Archaeologists of the past have sometimes used destructive techniques resulting in potential knowledge being lost, but what they did also build the corpus of knowledge that allows modern archaeology to exist. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/39 "2018-10-22T13:38:19Z")
Oh, I would also add that in this day and age, the majority of archaelogy consists in preventive archaeology. That is to say, eggheads hurriedly digging up an area just in case, on a short deadline and shoestring budget, before the bulldozers come in to dig the foundations of the new mega-hotel slash highway overpass. It’s so common in certain parts of the world where preventive archaeology is required by law (such as on the isle of Crete) that civilian contractors & construction magnates have taken unto themselves to either build shit with zero foundations (which obviously is a major safety risk) or just start digging, \*then \*ask for a state permit and pay a token fine. All to avoid six-twelve months of delay of their precious precious profits. Stable, funded digs the kind you see on Indiana Jones are few and far between and only take place in large, complex sites of major importance. ETA : Oh, I see this had already been addressed. Nevermind then, carry on. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317/40 "2018-10-22T13:43:12Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The tech of 50 years from now will be fantasy to us, just as ours is to the people of 50 years ago. If that’s true, how will we be sure in 50 years that it’s _good enough_? If we waited another 50 years, maybe some other technology will enable us to examine the orientation of molecules. If we wait another 5000 years, maybe a further advancment will enable us to measure the spin states of fundamental particles and reconstruct their interactions and render a realistic and truthful video representation of what happened when the archaeological site was alive. I think that’s the major flaw in your argument. I mean, I don’t share your optimism about how much better the non-invasive scanning techniques can possibly get, but while we’re waiting, who gets to decide when the ‘good enough to proceed’ point has been reached? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/archaeology-is-unethical/823317.md?page=3)