So how long does someone has to be dead before it is considered archeology instead of grave robbing?


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Non-silly answers aside, although archaeologists often do get paid for the work they do, they get paid very differently from grave robbers.

Archaeologists, from my understanding, usually are paid for research, documentation, understanding, and educational benefit of what is acquired via the digging (and usually do so publicly and with no pretensions).

Murderhoboing er... wait, adventuring, no... um, grave-robbing (nailed it!) means breaking into a location where people or creatures are buried, usually with little to know public acknowledgement or interest (in other words, usually furtively and surreptitiously) and usually with no interest in educational elements with the usual intent of acquiring as much wealth from ancient artifacts as possible (which usually requires haste and indiscretion when getting in and getting out, hence the "look for valuable stuff, and ignore the rest" typically associated with said activities).

I say "usually" a lot under grave-robbing because the latter can actually be masqueraded or disguised as the former, and no single universal constant holds true. But boiled down, the basic ideas apply.

Archaeology is like paleontology: the digging up of past information found buried or otherwise lost. Grave-robbing is like adventuring: brave the perils of the past and present to make a quick buck.


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Cutlass wrote:
Drejk wrote:
Queen Moragan wrote:
As an Archeologist, I would say long enough for any relatives of the occupant of the tomb, that were alive whilst the occupant of the tomb was also alive, to be all dead.
That can be arranged.
True, but committing mass murder/genocide in order to fulfill that requirement would most definitely put one in the grave robbing category.

No, that puts one in the grave-filling category.


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chbgraphicarts wrote:
"For the Glory of the Ktarl-Ktarl British Empire!"

This earned a favorite. :3


The Title of This Thread wrote:


So how long does someone has to be dead before it is considered archeology instead of grave robbing?

So how long does a thread have to go go on before someone points out the incorrect use of the word has, as opposed to have?

I realize there's a lot of people with advanced degrees in archaeological fields rather than, say, literature...but wasn't basic English part of your undergrads?

Grammatical trolling aside (it's probably just a typo that was realized far too late to edit, but I couldn't resist hitting an obviously educated crowd with that one), I love the nature of the question, and Rynjin's musings on assassination as well.

I wish I had something to contribute of any actual use.

Oh, yes. A question. Do you think with the advent of video and limitless digital storage that archaeology will remain a valid field hundreds of years from now when trying to gain a reference to our current state of life?

I almost believe that given our evolution as a society to a collective base of knowledge via the internet, any efforts to understand life beyond that which is recorded by so many laypersons on a daily basis is probably a waste of time. Just think of how many people record and upload the most mundane and banal videos on YouTube every minute. There's no way future societies won't have a perfect picture of at least the developed first world nations of today.

Liberty's Edge

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thegreenteagamer wrote:
The Title of This Thread wrote:


So how long does someone has to be dead before it is considered archeology instead of grave robbing?

So how long does a thread have to go go on before someone points out the incorrect use of the word has, as opposed to have?

I realize there's a lot of people with advanced degrees in archaeological fields rather than, say, literature...but wasn't basic English part of your undergrads?

Grammatical trolling aside (it's probably just a typo that was realized far too late to edit, but I couldn't resist hitting an obviously educated crowd with that one), I love the nature of the question, and Rynjin's musings on assassination as well.

I wish I had something to contribute of any actual use.

Oh, yes. A question. Do you think with the advent of video and limitless digital storage that archaeology will remain a valid field hundreds of years from now when trying to gain a reference to our current state of life?

I almost believe that given our evolution as a society to a collective base of knowledge via the internet, any efforts to understand life beyond that which is recorded by so many laypersons on a daily basis is probably a waste of time. Just think of how many people record and upload the most mundane and banal videos on YouTube every minute. There's no way future societies won't have a perfect picture of at least the developed first world nations of today.

One of the problems that I have, at least partially reinforced by studying archeology, is that I am the eternal pessimist. All the civilizations that we know of have collapsed, except this one. All the governments that we know of have fallen, except for the current crop. Therefore, if you were a betting person, how would you bet things would turn out for us over the long run?

So, whatever people in the future think and or can find out about us in the here and now is going to depend on whether our civilization is still around, how it ended and when it ended relative to the people in that future, and last but not least what their technological abilities are and how interested they are in conducting real archeology.

What I find to be a sobering consideration is that essentially "modern" humans have been on the scene for at least 40,000 years to possibly as much as 100,000 years ago or longer. Against that backdrop, our current span of good historical/archeological records/knowledge only goes back about 4,000 years or so and our current massive technological advancement rate has only been going on for around 150 years or so. The question then becomes how many times during the past 100,000 years or so has this sort of thing happened before?

People would argue that if there had been significant and truly ancient civilizations that we would have found traces of them. Perhaps, but civilizations and major cities have a tendency to be found on/near sea coasts and major river systems for logistics considerations. During the last ice age ending around 10,000 years ago sea levels were around 300 feet lower than they are now.

As far as we are concerned, f**k Al Gore and all the anthropogenic global warming horse manure. This has been a relatively long interglacial period and if you are looking at the actual data as opposed to the hype and know how to do basic analysis there are signs it is drawing to a close. So, if the glaciers advance again sometime this century or so, how much of our civilization will be left to find 4,000 years from now? Future archeologists may very well be trying to figure out what happened in the wars between the Coca Cola and the Pepsi people as the glass bottle fragments should still be findable long after most other things have gone.

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