Sarah Parcak: evaluation

Transcript context

…What do you think is the greatest archaeological mistake of, say, the last 100 years? Something we touched and should have left alone. That is a wonderful question. Wow, no one’s ever asked me that before. What is the greatest archaeological mistake? That’s a hard question because there have been a lot of mistakes. I don’t know about the biggest mistake. I have my own personal opinion, but I don’t speak on behalf of my colleagues for this one. I think when archaeologists go into the field, they don’t pair conservation alongside excavation. In other words, they’ll dig, and then whatever they’ve excavated, they won’t protect, or they won’t solidify, or they won’t take the necessary steps to make sure that whatever they’ve excavated — and this isn’t in every case, by the way, but in a lot of cases, and especially from 100 years ago and up to maybe 25 years ago when this wasn’t as much of a priority — these things were left exposed to the elements, so a lot of these amazing discoveries from a long time ago are exposed to the elements. You look at archaeological sites like Pompeii, where the ministry in Italy responsible for its conservation — they’ve been chronically underfunded. I’ve heard there are potential connections to Mafia, lots of corruption. A lot of these amazing houses are almost falling down. I think conservation and protecting sites needs to be funded as much as new discoveries. And it’s not just Italy — this is an issue all over the world. As you know, in places such as Luxor, often people who live there — they’ll build homes on top of elite tombs. What should archaeologists do about that? Just leave it alone? Try to move the people out? Is there a way to deal with the people who are living there that is a fair bargaining position, given that the government might be on your side rather than theirs?…

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