"The act of archaeology is desecration." From an earlier posting. I've worked with archaeologists, though I have only a passing experience with the field. But it is my understanding that archaeologists themselves have developed a stringent code about removing artifacts. As I understand it, this code more or less says that nothing will be removed from a site unless the site is going to be disturbed by either natural or human activity. This is as much for scientific/technical reasons (better diagnostic tools will be available in the future), as it is for ethical/moral/spiritual reasons. Again, there are probably people in this list who understand this better than I do. My own $.02. eric siegel [log in to unmask]