▲ 327 r/askscience
How does anything valuable become buried for us to excavate later?
If I see something abandoned that is valuable, I pick it up and either keep it, repurpose it, or find its owner. How can something like an abandoned Roman villa in the UK be found with intact mosaics or even things such as coins or children's shoes? It seems to me that the first thing locals would do once the Romans left would be to scavenge anything left behind, even looking for places where they might have buried valuables for later retrieval. Why are some sites left alone long enough to collect sediment layers, especially at sites where there is subsequent human habitation across thousands of years? I don't get it.
u/Sawtooth_Troy — 2 days ago