It’s a government permit thing, not a time thing. If you go an dig up an Etruscan grave on your own it is absolutely grave robbing.
I think it’s more about intent and what you do with the findings and who gains from it. If you and your team announce your plans ahead of time, document everything meticulously, deliver the pieces to a museum or archive, publish papers and deliver seminars and attend conferences on it… it’s probably archaeology. The public then has at least some access to the value of your work.
If you and your associates do it all in secret, sell the artifacts to some rich asshole (esp. via a fence), and cover your tracks, that seems a lot more like grave robbing. You’ve stolen all the value in that case.
Hmm, sounds like a lot of the Egyptian Pharoah ‘research’ a few centuries ago.
More than 20 minutes
I’ll set a timer.
Archaeologists can’t afford zydrate, so they resort to grave robbing.
