If I sound rude it's because I found it frustrating that I'd looked up things to back up my point, and you haven't got the time to read them.
"we don't have a single specific example of any archaeology that *might* be destroyed? No reason to believe that current techniques aren't sufficient to preserve important archaeology?
It's the precautionary principle. It's that we actually can't and don't know what those things might be. It's like if you spoke to a victorian antiquarian and asked them to not dig up the barrows because they were spoiling the stratigraphy and the carbon dating evidence and the chance of running some geophys over it. He couldn't imagine what you were talking about because to his eyes, he'd found a bit of charred bone and measured a skull's proportions and ooh there's a gold torc, what more would anyone want.
"So the argument would seem to be that we shouldn't undertake restoration *just in case*? On that basis, we would *never* restore or dig, because no generation can *ever* be certain that they've reached the peak of technology.
No, that's not what's being said. It's that the 'resource' (ie all the archaeological information under the ground) is finite at Avebury. So yes you can dig (as they did at one part of the purported Beckhampton avenue) but you can only dig a bit at a time. You learn something this time. But you leave a bit left so people can learn stuff in the future. So yes, you can dig, you can 'restore' (provided you know what was originally there to restore it, I suppose) - but you don't take a unique and nationally (internationally?) important site like Avebury and dig it all up, restore it all up, at once.
"At some point, we have to accept that every site of human activity can't be hermetically preserved for eternity, and nor is that desirable."
No of course not, you're totally right. But Avebury certainly isn't being hermetically preserved, it's a massive tourist attraction with car parks and restaurants and a road and everything. Why not change it one thing at a time, a tweak here and there, a bit of information gleaned here and there, building on previous knowledge, moving forward slowly but surely. Not treating the place like some kind of prehistoric recreation attraction. And, I know it's a slippery slope sort of point, but if you want the stones re-erected, do you want the ditch dug out as well, where does one stop? Reinstate the size of the banks? The entrances? (Remove all the houses... the road)
