That’s very much the case. And even now, there are many technologies such as lidar and magnetometry that can uncover a huge amount of information about a site.

Nothing, at this point, can replace what is learned by just getting on your knees with a trowel, but between a lack of funding and the knowledge that digging a site is inherently destructive, it’s usually restricted to small test pits these days rather than huge trenches like people have seen in the past.

Human remains are also generally treated with far more respect now than they used to be. They are often re-interred where they are found after study if they are ever removed in the first place. In areas where indigenous people are around and find those burials to be sacred, archaeology is almost always only done with their permission and supervision now. The field has gone through a big revolution in terms of ethics and all for the better.

But, of course, people think “we shouldn’t just plow through layers like Schliemann did at Troy and make long-term and very careful plans about where and when we dig” means that there’s some sort of conspiracy.

Would it be nice to just dig up every single thing on the hill of Göbekli Tepe? Sure. But in order to do that, you would have to destroy any archaeology that lays on top of other archaeology, meaning you just lose valuable information as you make your way to the bottom, so it would be bad science.

Part of the problem is that people who don’t really know much about the field of archaeology think that a cool-looking artifact can teach us more than a wall course or a tiny pot sherd and that’s just not true.