Grave robbery is the plundering of grave goods to sell them on the antiquities market. Gaining evidence about the past is not a goal, so there's no attention gi

Grave robbery is the plundering of grave goods to sell them on the antiquities market. Gaining evidence about the past is not a goal, so there's no attention given to documenting the site as it is excavated nor to preserving non-salable artifacts. Indeed, since these digs are usually illicit, documenting the provenance of the objects and the excavation process is a liability. Any "restoration" that's done to the grave goods is done to increase its attractiveness in the market, often using techniques that destroy any of the limited value it already had to archeology after being divorced from its original archeological context. Archeology digs things up to learn about the past. Sure, some of the prettier objects might end up on display in a museum, but studying the objects and the context they were found in is the point. The majority of a dig's finds are going to live in basement storage for scholars to study. These aren't treasures to be collected to impress people or demonstrate wealth. We're often talking about scraps of leather, potsherds, nails, scraps of wood... nothing impressive. Grave robbers would just destroy any of this if it got in the way of the treasure they're after. The digging is careful and well-documented. The context the objects are found in is often more telling than the objects themselves.