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.
We had a similar discussion some years ago over East Kennet Long Barrow Rhiannon. I think one of the points I made back then was that we don’t arrive in the future with just one step from the present. As with most disciplines it’s a progression, and we need to go through a sequence of events to get from here to there. Put another way, we need to learn through investigative research (and the mistakes as well as the successes that incurs) before we can get to that magical place in the future where we can see inside something without taking it apart.
As has been pointed out elsewhere however, we don’t need to take everything apart in one go now but, not doing (investigating) anything is just as bad as trying to do everything in one go. There are also ‘special cases’ and I think Avebury is one of them. Seahenge was another, so too was Sutton Hoo.
