> He became friendly with the local tribespeople, who showed him ruins that archaeologists didn’t know existed. “They’ll take you to places—the last Westerner was some Roman guy,” he jokes.
I guess one good thing about being an archeologist must be that history is added one year per year. You get to a ruin which has been messed up by Roman archaeologists, and their stuff is also artifacts.
You get to a ruin messed up by Indiana Jones’s in the 1940’s or whatever, just note the location, your great^10 grandkids can come back and collect his hat as an artifact.
> You get to a ruin which has been messed up by Roman archaeologists, and their stuff is also artifacts.
In the case of Egypt, the chief culprits are usually ancient Egyptians. Not just common thiefs mind you, but also officials from later dynasties using grave goods as their treasury.
Archaeologists make a point of taking to locals all around the world. In most cases, you simply won't excavate if the locals don't want to talk.
I had a British farmer once locate a medieval path through his land. The documentary evidence already suggested it was in his field and he knew where his plow had found a lot of rocks. We dug a trench and found a beautiful cobblestone path inside.
Makes you really stop and think.