Comment by bglazer

One aspect of archaeology that I really find fascinating is the practice of leaving certain artifacts unexplored. The original discoverers of the scrolls tried to unroll a few, apparently found it was impossible without completely destroying the scroll, and then just left the rest undisturbed. Rather than pushing forward and destroying everything, they left these as a mystery for a future age. Two centuries (!!) later we can finally begin to understand these, with the aid of technology that would be utterly unthinkable to those people who very thoughtfully restrained themselves.