Archaeologists and the State Bureau of Cultural Relics in China advocate a slow excavation of many sites, but especially ones of high importance like the terracotta warriors, said Lam Wen-cheong, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The reason is that sites like a royal mausoleum contain many valuable materials, such as textiles, that take time and patience to excavate.
“If we lost information during the excavation, then there is no way to rediscover that later,” Lam said.
Furthermore, archaeologists understand that technology is improving rapidly, and scientists might be able to glean better information from a site in the future, said Peter Cobb, a field archaeologist and assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong.
“Because the information in the ground is our primary source of data about the ancient past, and because it’s very important to record everything very precisely, we understand that the technologies available to the archaeologists are going to change with time. So, we leave significant portions of the sites unexcavated so that, in a few decades, maybe 100 years, as the technology for documenting and recording these sites improves, we will have a better record in the future,” he said.
An excellent recent example of this is the excavation of the Sanxingdui ruins in Sichuan province in southwest China.
As reported by the Post in June 2021, the site was initially excavated in 1986 using basic tools like shovels and brushes. The team had only one camera to share and used bicycles for transport.
That excavation revealed interesting artefacts, but fast forward to 2021, and the level of technology has jumped dramatically. For example, scientists now chemically test the soil during digs to see if it contains materials that would be hard to spot with the naked eye.
Now, archaeologists are unearthing a site on par with the terracotta warriors for awe and importance.
One of the most important inventions for archaeology was carbon 14 dating, which is crucial for estimating when an organism died. It was not widely used until the 1970s.
Chris Merritt, a Utah state historic preservation officer in the US, said that, even now, the process is becoming more refined and “dates from the 1980s and 1990s are being reanalysed with more clarity”.
“Sites we excavated in the 1950s, no matter how well they were done, were still done with the most advanced techniques available at the time,” he said.
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Ming dynasty Great Wall fort ruins revealed in northwest China’s Shaanxi province
Ming dynasty Great Wall fort ruins revealed in northwest China’s Shaanxi province
Merritt also pointed to DNA recovery as a breakthrough, relaying the story of a tobacco pipe that was found in a 19th-century saloon in the US state of Nevada. It had markers of female DNA, which changed how scientists thought life was like at the time.
Another world-famous site that has been left largely unexcavated is Pompeii in southern Italy. In a November New Yorker profile, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the new director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, said excavation for the sake of excavation would be “very problematic, and somehow irresponsible”.
The logic for not excavating all of Pompeii is that, unless it is fundamental to shaping our understanding of history, future scientists are more likely to glean better information when they excavate.
Finally, a significant reason why sites remain unexcavated is simply a matter of time and energy. Archaeologists spend a lot of effort recording data and analysing every individual object. Cobb said small portions of a site create more than enough work for a research team.
“We would be overwhelmed with data recording, analysis, and conservation if we excavate too much of a site,” he said.
As for the recently discovered terracotta warriors in Xian, they will be moved to a preservation warehouse where they will be restored and studied.
