Something that always immensely bothers me about these kinds of things is that all the interest and excitement about archeological finds totally overshadows the reality that we are effectively sterilizing our whole earth when we dig up and remove artifacts whenever and wherever we find them, especially burials.

It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.

When you look at it that way, to me at least it feels way more similar to colonial plundering like the Hispanics in South and Central America, totally devastating whole cultures, than some kind of righteous or even ethical practice, it is after all objectively desecration of burials that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.

I say that while also being a bit conflicted because we have and do learn so much about things and cultures we have forgotten, were overrun, died out, or maybe were even intentionally erased from historical and cultural records. It does conflict me though in cases like this, where a burial is not respected and maybe reinterred when practical, but rather some detached and irreligious academic types pick apart the burial because they have lost all touch with the very humanity they seem to tell themselves they are studying; and the bones end up on some filing cabinet hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

And that’s without even addressing all the other sterilizing effects like digital “objects” and throwaway culture and construction that will practically leave nothing of value left behind for some future people to find.

Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all. There will be no way to discover what humans did in this period, because there is very little of anything physical that remains. My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.

The treatment archeological finds get today is downright religious compared "that's a damn good stone, we'll use that stone for a lintel, chuck the skeleton in the river" that would've happened prior to the modern era.

>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.

Well, no, because as you've said, the evidence will be in warehouses, and then at some later time also buried. The practice of human archeology is as much a part of culture that the future may study as the cultures that it itself studies.

>it is after all objectively desecration of burials

What do you mean "objectively desecration"? Whether something is sacred or not is purely a matter of opinion. "Objectively" it's just some configuration of atoms being moved from one place to another, neither action inherently having any more meaning or specialness than the other.

>that were never meant to be dug up to satisfy the curiosity and career of some rather selfish and increasingly irreligious academic.

Who cares what the intent was? The people who put it in the ground are dead, and so are their children, and their children. The only living people who care are the ones digging it up.

>Think about it, very little of today will be of value if it survives at all.

That's what you think because you're alive now to experience it. It's worthless to you because it's abundant. Someone a million years from now may see your PC and that sarcophagus as equally priceless artifacts, because both points in time will be roughly equally distant.

Maybe there were advanced human civilizations on the planet before the current (there are such theories), but at some point they also got so advanced that they accidentally/systematically removed all of their traces, and have declined in some way. (though the theories are have better explanation for their lack of artifacts apart from a few OOPARTs)

Our age unfortunately will have long-lasting traces in the forms of various plastics and forever-chemicals.

>It feels like a kind of end of civilization or even humanity type of thing, where at some point all of the earth will have been excavated and all human evidence will have been removed and catalogued and archived in some warehouse, totally sanitizing sterilizing the planet of human activity.

My understanding is that most countries prevent areas from being wholesale dug up, but only permit smaller, limited digs for this reason. So a representative sample of a site can be reexamined at a future date with future technology to reassess understanding. Some sites have had many many digs in this fashion, and still havent dug the entire site. In fact its a criticism of some semi famous sites, usually from charlatans, that the entire site hasnt been dug therefore we are leaving evidence of their popular wackjob ideas in the ground

>because there is very little of anything physical that remains.

I dont know thats true. Lots of what we do is kept and recorded. And our activity surely leaves traces. Plastics especially.

>My understanding is that outside of specific medium, none of the data we generate or consume will last, let alone survive something like a nuclear war or even a massive solar flair.

I dont believe this is true either. We arent backing our society up to a single old spinning disk. We have documents that immediately predate data storage. We have old documents stored in multiple places. We have lost certain specific artefacts of our own history but it seems doomerish to assume thats what happens universally.

1. A lot of archaeology is "rescue" archaeology. i.e. Either natural processes (e.g. rivers shifting) have threatened a site or the decision has been made to build, but there is a legal requirement to have the site surveyed and dug (if warranted). If you have an issue with this, then it must be with rivers shifting or people building. Rescue archaeology merely rescues the past from otherwise certain destruction.

2. Archaeologists are keenly aware that digging is a destructive act. There are countless examples of sites that were dug with unsophisticated techniques (e.g. bulldozers and dynamite) in the past that could have taught us far more were they dug with even slightly more modern (and careful) techniques. This is why, outside of rescue archaeology, excavations are done with careful deliberation. It's also standard practice to excavate sites only partially, leaving some of it intact for future archaeologists to dig with more advanced technology and techniques.

3. Rest assured, there yet remains vast quantities of history buried in the ground, waiting to be discovered. e.g. We have discovered cuneiform records referring to entire cities that remain buried and unknown. Other cities of the past are under modern settlements and are, at present, mostly inaccessible to archaeologists. It may seem like the world has been exhaustively explored, but there are still huge surprises waiting underground.

>catalogued and archived in some warehouse

"We have top men working on the Ark right now."

[dead]