Archaeological Preservation Quotes

Ancient barrows get cleared away. Legislation is pretty much 19th century. Global warming means there is an awful lot of erosion, exposing new archaeology, there is not the funding around to deal with it.

My dream is to map every archaeological site in the world because, if we can do that, then we have this massive global data base that all sorts of global heritage organizations and heritage organizations within countries can use, and they can use that information to protect what's there.

We have so many issues with overpopulation and urbanization and site looting. And this isn't just Egypt. This is everywhere in the world, even in America. So we only have a limited amount of time left before many archaeological sites all over the world are destroyed.

Looting and site destruction are global problems. We have a tough road ahead, and one key will be developing more collaborations and using new technologies like satellite imagery.

We want to excite the world about what's out there. But we don't want them to say, 'Oh, there are lots of sites in Egypt - let's loot.'

It's absolutely critical, you know, to train young men and women not just to find sites, but also to protect sites, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring. There's been significant site-looting in Egypt and elsewhere across the Middle East.

Saddam Hussein was fascinated by ancient Babylon and Assyria. He made money available to protect and develop the great archaeological sites. The great achievements of Mesopotamian civilisation were pressed into the service of the Ba'athist regime.

What is conserved in the ground? Stone, bronze, ivory, bone, sometimes pottery. Never wood objects, no fabric or skins. That completely skews our notions about primitive man.

The Thames could be thought of as England's longest archaeological site, and no fewer than 90,000 objects recovered from its foreshore are in the collection of the Museum of London, whose 30-year relationship with London mudlarks is both committed and highly regulated.

I think archaeologists are stuck, and we are losing our past at a very rapid rate. Tens of thousands of sites will be lost, and we've only unveiled a tiny percent of the past.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.

We only have a limited amount of time left before many archaeological sites all over the world are destroyed. So we have to be really selective about where we dig.

Pompeii is an extraordinary place to be because it was preserved exactly as it was. There are many other sites. If you visit any other antiquity-type sites throughout the world, they're very damaged with what's gone on over the centuries since they were abandoned. But this one was just, like, sealed, so you're looking at rock surfaces and the carving of letters and names in the stones looks like it was done yesterday.

It is probable that a greater number of monuments of the skill and industry of man will, in the course of the ages, be collected together in the bed of the ocean than will exist at any other time on the surface of the continents.