What percentage of ancient american ruins have been excavated?

Question

if it's not a lot, are most ruins hard to excavate because of overgrown jungles, or whats the dealio?

Answer 1

The majority of the American archaeological sites haven't been excavated.

Consider the following

"Arizona's statewide catalog lists more than 100,000 known sites, most of which have not been inventoried. "

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic...

"Lamanai's ruins are some of the oldest in Belize dating back to 700 B.C., the site has received more attention than other archaeological sites in the country. Still, of the 700 buildings within the complex, less than five percent have been excavated and explored."

http://www.northernbelize.com/see_lamana...

Years ago Fairfax County Virgina had 8,000 identified sites.

Given, most aren't "ancient ruins" and the odds of finding another Mesa Verde, or Machu Picco are extremely unlikely. Then something like the Wilcox Ranch appears.

Even when sites have been excavated, not everything has been dug up. Something like half of Stonehenge hasn't been dug.

Answer 2

Archaeology is not about excavating every site in the whole world.  There are sites out there that have been discovered, but have not been excavated.  In order to excavate a site, an archaeologist must formulate a research question.  There has to be a reason to dig or it is just "pot hunting."  If all of the sites were excavated without a purpose, important information would be lost and future archaeologists wouldn't have anything to study.

As far as the jungle part of the question, I have never seen any sort of terrain stop an archaeologist from excavating a site.  Whether in deep jungles, the harshest deserts, or snake infested lakes (underwater archaeology), archaeologists will do what it takes if they believe that they can discover something useful or important.

Answer 3

As the ruins are undiscovered they would be difficult to count.

However you are right that jungles slow the process immensely, especially in central and south America. A professor of mine was doing some reconnaissance in the jungle of Central America in a place that they had walked over 3 or more times before, and came across a minor temple that they hadn't noticed before.

I've seen people use helicopters to find larger temples amongst the jungles.

Theres also Lidar which in some cases can scan jungles and essentially remove the trees from the image thus making it alot easier to find human made structures and materials.