Comment by beloch

Reconstruction is great provided archaeologists are done with the site and at least some of the tourism revenue generated is put towards archaeology.

Ancient Mesopotamia is, in my view, one of the most exciting fields out there, simply because their written records are imperishable. There's thousands of years of history, not pre-history, there. Much of it has already been discovered but, for want of money, not yet fully studied. Not yet deciphered. Not yet understood.

We know the approximate locations of important cities that have yet to be found. We know roughly where they are, but they're not in easy places to access due to remoteness as well as political instability and violence. We currently only have records from other places to tell us they exist, but we could find entire libraries and hear from these ancient people in their own words.

There are few other frontiers in all of archaeology that offer such potential for gaining intimate knowledge of ancient human societies. Anything that can inject a little much-needed funding into the field is welcome.