When it comes to narratives of archaeological discovery, chance and naïveté beat out professional expertise, regional or collective knowledge, and educated guesses every time. The people want one thing, and that’s to hear about how some bored French teens/Syrian junior-high math teacher/family of eight on vacation accidentally
*British Museum acquisitions department voice* We got this priceless ancient artifact from “””anonymous Middle Eastern peasants””” who didn’t know what it was and couldn’t take care of it anyway. No, we can’t tell you who we got [read: stole] it from, because then you might realize that they’ve been campaigning for its repatriation for decades.
Did you also grow up re-reading Roald Dahl's "The Mildenhall Treasure"?
*British Museum acquisitions department voice* We got this priceless ancient artifact from “””anonymous Middle Eastern peasants””” who didn’t know what it was and couldn’t take care of it anyway. No, we can’t tell you who we got [read: stole] it from, because then you might realize that they’ve been campaigning for its repatriation for decades.