Ach, you make some excellent points GJ and I'm inclined to agree with most of them. The one thing I would add however is the time line factor - where one generation considers it acceptable to 'remove' objects for 'study' future generations see it as cultural theft. Where one generation sees digging into barrows as... well I'm not quite sure how they saw it (investigating the past? Treasure hunting?) future generations see it as cultural vandalism.

Only forty years ago the archaeologist Richard Atkinson, together with the BBC, dug a tunnel into the heart of Silbury; I don't think there were many objections back then but now it can be seen for the cultural vandalism it most certainly was. In historical terms that action was relatively recent (and Atkinson and co should have known better) but in the grander scheme of things this is where we tend to trip ourselves up - judging our predecessors' acts by our own modern standards.

Our modern standards may or may not be correct, but our predecessors had no way of knowing that :-)