Eli5 – Why are we finding entire homes and streets in archaeological digs? doesn’t anyone notice a street or building starting to get covered in dirt and dust? at some point someone must notice the old plato theatre is knee high into the earth?

Question

Eli5 – Why are we finding entire homes and streets in archaeological digs? doesn’t anyone notice a street or building starting to get covered in dirt and dust? at some point someone must notice the old plato theatre is knee high into the earth?

In: 2940

Answer 1

Mostly we don’t find anything like this. We tend to just find remnants like the foundations of buildings. The intact buildings that have survived from hundreds or thousands of years ago usually weren’t buried at all – they were actively preserved, often by being given a new purpose. E.g. some ancient Greek & Roman temples were repurposed as Christian churches.

Excavating intact buildings is incredibly rare and restricted to exceptional cases like Pompeii and Herculaneum which were buried within the space of a day or so under volcanic ashfalls.