Even though it's generally pretty morally frowned upon, it's probably a high risk to damaging historical evidence that the pillagers may not consider "valuable" for resale in the process of finding things they do.
It's also pretty much destruction and hoarding/privatization of literal historical artifacts, art theft on a chronologically heart breaking scale.
Really we do largely want to touch those things. Just slowly and carefully and for the benefit of a larger volume of knowledge for the whole of humanity.
"It belongs in a museum" may have some good debate around it, but "it belongs on the free market for the highest bidder" is probably statistically less favored, I'd wager.
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Even though it's generally pretty morally frowned upon, it's probably a high risk to damaging historical evidence that the pillagers may not consider "valuable" for resale in the process of finding things they do.
It's also pretty much destruction and hoarding/privatization of literal historical artifacts, art theft on a chronologically heart breaking scale.
Really we do largely want to touch those things. Just slowly and carefully and for the benefit of a larger volume of knowledge for the whole of humanity.
"It belongs in a museum" may have some good debate around it, but "it belongs on the free market for the highest bidder" is probably statistically less favored, I'd wager.