> no real reason [...] still coated in whatever was floating around the environment

I wonder, might one instead make an argument that it's not currently economic-technologically feasible to avoid artifact surface information destruction and contamination, at any stage of the dig-to-archival-conservation pipeline, nor to extract whatever information might be there, outside of very rare cases? Rather than there's no information there to lose?

Perhaps it becomes possible-and-affordable at some point, to frequently check, say, "oh neat, here are some 10 um notches on the surface, with some nice yeast, and some pollen, and oh, maybe that's a bit of calcified biofilm for nanopore DNA?"? Does automated lab tech progress, someday make "brushed, handled, dusted, washed, and shelf in the basement" start sounding like 19thC "we accessed the site using dynamite"?