How do Archaeologists decide where to dig?

[Kipper]

As far as a list of archaeological sites I suppose it must depend on where you are.

Here (New Zealand) a record is kept of all sites of archeological interest by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. It is a criminal offence to knowingly interfere with such a site unless permission is given by the said trust.

Permission will only be given after the local iwi (sub-tribe) has been consulted and their veiws and traditions have been taken into consideration, ie no eating food or smoking on a dig site as these are noa or common activites and connot be done on sacred ground without causing offence.
Arangements must be made for what should occur should human remains be discoverd (usually stop digging) and frequently a member of the iwi will participate in the dig as an observer.

This applies even for european sites as it is not uncommon for excavations to reach the bottom level and find pre-european remains.

The Trust must be notified of the results of the excavation in a peliminary report as well as suppling a copy of the later full report when it is produced.

As far as I know no one has ever been prosecuted for an illegal excavation although running battles occur with bottle collectors who think they have a god given right to destroy archeological evidence for their own amusement and profit.

[beakerxf]

**
Extrapolating from beakerxf’s comments about location, what about international politics?**

International politicals do play a factor. Many countries have trying to take control of their own cultural heritage after it being the domain of Europeans.

For instance, Egypt tries to limit its projects to Egyptian archaeologists (however Cleopatra’s palace is a recent exception). Unfortunately, according to those I have talked to, Egypt has a hit and miss approach to archaeology. Some projects get too much attention and others are ignored completely.

For example, a decade or so ago, construction uncovered two chambers alongside Cheop’s pyramid. The construction had knocked lose a giant stone forming the top of one of the chambers, breaking the seal. Using a tiny camera, archaeologists could see that there was a boat, broken down into several pieces. They could also see that the exposure to air was damaging to the ancient wood.

Another boat was found in the next chamber. For whatever reason, this one was excavated, and assembled. The government built an enclosure to display the boat, but didn’t have the funds for air conditioning and the wood suffered some damage. They do have air conditioning now, but the enclosure is still less than ideal.

The other boat is still in its chamber, rapidly deteriorating. I can not tell you how much that frustrated my professors. They’d give their right arm to excavate the second boat and preserve it, but Eygpt isn’t interested. Do you know how rare Egyptians boats are? There have been less than a half dozen found intact. After that, archaeologists can only look to funerary models and artwork for examples of Egyptian boatmaking.

Talk about letting a valuable find go to waste.

Essentially, Egypt is the only country that I know a little something o the politics. Oh, and Turkey. They let the nautical archaeologist excavate in Turkish waters, but the finds must become the property of Turkey, which seems a reasonable demand.

In case anyone is interested, this is the website for the program I was in before deciding I liked history better. This institute is in many ways considered the pioneer in the field of underwater archaeology and they have a lot of interesting projects to check out. Institute of Nautical Archaeology

[notquitekarpov]

I think the influence of this may be much greater than is generally accepted - and not just in totalitarian states like Iraq or China (see manhattan’s mailing). In fact one of the biggest offenders is Israel, where it is not just a question of only sites getting excavation funding when they can be used support a Zionist historical interpretation of history but where sites show the true continuity of non-Jewish settlement are often actively destroyed. This is of course particular prevalent in Jerusalem. As an active agenda this is of course quite different, and much more sinister, than the bias in Western archaeology created by the interaction between having to get funding versus what happens to be currently fashionable area for investigation - with the tendency to conduct investigations on sites which support the status quo viewpoint. As the archaeological process destroys the very site it investigates such active bias, destruction of potentially contrary evidence and straight propaganda can be more difficult to correct at a later stage than in other areas of science.

On the positive side I understand there is now some resistance breaking out into the open within the Israeli scientific community to what has been going on.

[Jois]

BTW: EVERYone would be able to spell Israel if we could just have that Brit connected ae on the keyboard.

In the USA with our not-so-ancient history we have to file some kind of paper about the possibility of finding archealogically interesting articles before disturbing the site.

Thanks for the interesting topic, Manny.

[Harmonious_Discord]

They feel it in their bones.

[manhattan]

Hah! An example of politics in archaeology from today’s news. Seems that Guatemalan archaeologists have found the Mayan city of El Pajaral, which is expected to be as big a find as Tikal. Seems that some Gringo wanted to find the place back in the ‘70s, but the then-ruling folks didn’t cooperate. But now, cooperation with a Guatemalan team has led to the find.

[justwannano]

Don’t know much about anywhere else but here in SE Iowa the archiologists pretty much know where the sites are.They dig before they build highways etc. This is probably not typical in that it is mostly farm land.The farmers are pretty good about sharing the info with authorities.It is also hard to keep a secret like a old indian settelment.
The arrowhead hunting has suffered recently because of new farming practices.Minimum tillage.

[Kilgore_Trout_1]

A Roman fishing boat will not be as important as a Roman trireme. Fishing boats have been found in the past. Last I heard no trireme (a type of miltary vessel.) has ever been found. So the fishing vessel will be ignored for the time being.*

“Almost as rare as Roman warships, for instance. are fishing boats; the [Museum of Roman Ships at Fiumicino] has only one that has been excavated and preserved.” -april 2000 issue of discover

it seems that trade ships are the common find, not fishing ships. the particular dig that this article is about uncovered 17 ships in Pisa.