Hacker News Reader

Comment by quercus | Hacker News Reader

No pictures. Drives me crazy when an article about an archaeological discovery provides not a single image of the object.

View on HN

Having been on the other side of this, archaeologists don't take pictures to look good, but for documentation. There's typically also some ethical concerns if human remains or sacred sites are involved. Nevertheless, there are some photos in this article:

https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/2-500-year-old-aphrodite-t...

>archaeologists don't take pictures to look good, but for documentation

Before clicking the link I didn't realize what this sentence actually meant. I think I do not have the skills to figure out why these stones are important. Makes you appreciate the works of actual photographers though so that's nice

If the picture can’t be shared publicly there should be some disclaimer or note on that. I think it is very rare for these classical era and prior digs to have credible reasons for not releasing.

These photos seem fine to me and were likely provided by the team, I was just explaining the general problem.

However, I've been on ancient digs where we declined to release pictures of the interesting bits due to ethical concerns, generally photos of graves or remains. It's also common if the photo would leak the location of a sensitive site, or violate someone's privacy. You're free to disagree with those standards, but they're widely-held enough that violating them will prevent publication and earn you a bad reputation.

On deterring certain bad elements, that does sound credible. Though of course it would just mean some types of pictures are withheld, not all. It would have to be a very sensitive situation that no possible picture can be taken that is suitable for public release.

> Though of course it would just mean some types of pictures are withheld, not all.

Calculating where something is from light and shadows, is not that difficult. If you're trying to protect the location of a dig, it is usually safer to not release any photos at all.

For example, last year's desert monolith didn't have its location shared on purpose, but with a little footage it took the public all of two days to locate it, by working out which flight path the helicopter took.

Images leak location information.

Honest question: is there really an ethical concern if the graves are more than 2000 years old?

Many people, myself included, argue that there is. I acknowledge that there's a value to some excavations, but you should pursue those goals as respectfully as possible. If I can't ask descendants, the safest thing to do ethically is treat them as I would treat something equivalent in my own life.

In a more pragmatic sense, trying to draw a line at some finite number of years always turns up an edge case like Kennewick man where someone genuinely cares about a 9k year old skeleton. Adopting the conservative approach of "extend the same respect to everyone, regardless of age" is both the simplest and the legally safest ethical system.

The article says “He also emphasized that the biggest threats to historical sites were from treasure hunters and urbanization.”

The treasure hunter bit is going to be difficult to avoid if there are many photos.

I know! It was just an ad-buffet. I kept scrolling looking for any kind of visual enticement and kept being served ads. What a poor website / magazine / journalism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com