ANTH205 Dr. Reid Lecture 26 pg. Science 86, vol. Once a site is destroyed, it can never be replaced, and this holds for archaeological excavation as well. This is why archaeology is a historical science requiring precise observations about the context of past remains so that the critical relations among artifacts in the earth can be reconstructed to interpret the past. Artifacts alone, removed from the spot where they were left, cannot reveal much about the past.
Archaeological resources are part of our national heritage.
People who plunder sites without any regard for archaeological context either for profit or pleasure are robbing all of us of part of that heritage. And in most instances they would also be committing a crime. The need to protect archaeological resources has been recognized by federal, state, and local agencies, which administer protective laws through resource management and criminal prosecution. This contract work is most often done by privately owned cultural resource management companies. Since the mid-1970s most of the archaeological fieldwork in the Southwest has been related to cultural resource management.