Rhiannon wrote: At the moment, it is possible that we don't even know what knowledge could be lost. Don't you think?
Like how Stukeley couldn't have even imagined using geophys techniques?
Or even something more visible like dead beetles to infer the environment?
And in the future, there could be all sorts of tiny traces that we could pick up using whatever space-age techniques, that archaeologists of today haven't even dreamt up yet.
so it'd be a shame to lose all sorts of clues and information, just for the sake of satisfying our current-day aesthetics of wanting to see the stones up. do you not agree?
I'm sure that there would be plenty of opportunity in the future to find exactly the same things adjacent to any work carried out without having to worry unduly. Following your line of thought we can always argue that for ever more even more sophisticated equipment will be invented until eventually the whole shebang will have returned to nature before we actually did anything! Sympathetic excavation and the storing of samples all the way through the works would satisfy future research I'm sure.
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