My brother's an archeologist, and spent a lot of time in Cyprus. (Fabulous place. Go visit. Some of the best food in the world. Also, did you know there used to be tiny elephants and hippos living there?)

There's a lot of history there. I heard him on several occasions complaining about all that nasty modern Roman trash cluttering up his dig sites.

I don't understand the article's comment about the "big difference" between Roman artifacts vs Byzantine artifacts. Did she mean Roman artifacts are well-studied enough that archaeologists find them uninteresting? Or was the reason political?

Actually, the takeaway I had was that the Roman artifacts were precious and would be taken seriously, whereas the Byzantine artifacts were considered disposable.

I suspect this happens for two reasons. One is that the Byzantine era, being later and more prosperous, simply has more artifacts and is more well-understood, so new finds are less interesting. But I suspect the bigger reason is that the Roman Empire has a better reputation in history as the glorious pinnacle of Western Antiquity whereas the Byzantine Empire is denigrated as 1000 years of stagnant decline (although neither of these characterizations are very accurate).

I did not know about tiny elephants and hippos! Wow :)

This is a regular issue in Italy, also in smaller towns. Any kind of construction job involving excavation may end up unearthing something deemed interesting by the relevant authorities.Thanks to our traditionally slow bureaucracy, this means that construction works can be stuck for very long times (even years).

Also in Jerusalem. The (relatively) recent rail and light-rail infrastructure projects bumped into similar obstacles.

Greece is such a fascinating country. A few years ago I visited The Acropolis, and relative to the US, it really is mind-blowing to see a structure that's several thousand years old.

The really remarkable part about the Parthenon is that it likely would have been almost completely intact, if it hadn't been used as a powder magazine and blown up in the 1800s. It wasn't gradually ruined, it just blew up relatively recently (historically speaking).

All correct, except for the date, which was 1687 [1]. It happened during a war between the Venetians and the Ottoman Turks (the Turks stored gunpowder in the building; the Venetians fired a mortar at it). The Venetians compounded the damage by their incompetent attempt to loot some sculptures from the west pediment; these fell to the ground and smashed to pieces.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Destruction

Worth a spielberg movie