Agreed. The 'reconstruction' at Knossos on Crete[1] is a tragedy. Reinforced concrete everywhere, truncated walls capped with cement and an entirely invented up

Agreed. The 'reconstruction' at Knossos on Crete[1] is a tragedy. Reinforced concrete everywhere, truncated walls capped with cement and an entirely invented upper storey. The reconstructed fascia on the Neolithic burial mound at Newgrange in Ireland[2] is almost as bad: "a bit brutal, a bit overdone, kind of like Stalin does the Stone Age". In contrast, the slowly-eroding, uninterpreted mud-brick Khorezm fortressess in the Karakalpakstan region of Uzbekistan are highly evocative. The scale of the defensive fortresses tell you so much about the wealth and organization of the clans who built them. They stand magnificently alone in the desert. There's no interpretive centre, no gift shop. You'll have an entire fortress to yourself, where you can spend hours picking through millions of ancient potsherds. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos_(modern_history) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos_(modern_history) [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorezm_fortresses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khorezm_fortresses