Any artifacts uncovered, she said, will eventually be given to the state museum.
"I'm happy to say we have not had any activity that's harmed any artifacts," he said.
The exploratory team's initial focus was Mount Athos, partly because its inaccessibility was seen as better protecting any artifacts.
The park service requires that any artifacts found be donated to an acceptable repository, like a museum.
"He told me he didn't realize he'd damaged any artifacts and that he was sorry," Mr. Tsaravopoulos said later.
He has a theory, developed during threo years of guiding tourists around the United Kingdom, that Americans would like to own any artifacts associated with historical figures.
In part, this is a reflection of the deep hostility among Saudi conservatives toward any artifacts that predate the birth of Islam in the seventh century.
5 40 p.m. | Updated It's not an easy thing to mount a big exhibition of artifacts from China without any artifacts from China.
On the other hand, Peru did have laws in force at the time governing archaeological finds, and its government in theory had ownership of any artifacts unearthed from Peruvian soil.
Even if the charcoal is from a natural fire, not a human campfire, he said, the analysis should establish the age of any artifacts from the same sediment layer.
"It eliminates any artifacts, any history, anything that reminds us of how and why those people died," he told me on Tuesday, adding: "It has no connection to 9/11.
