as for virgin sites i.e undisturbed prehist sites , i would def frown on someone digging a hole ,trying to find a point to add to there collection, but historic sites as far as mding i see no harm there, simply because they are( historic ) now this may sound like a contradiction but let me explain my veiw, there would be little harm to the integrity of a hist site, because dates are known already and if not there is little that can be about that ,coins can be droped today that are dated from 1950, so someone finding it a thousand years from now could only gain an aproximate date which would be derived from other artifacts ,heck you can learn more from the actual site, i.e the masonry style cut or cobbled, wells , the tech used to create or occupy the site, mders would do little to impact this one way or another.but prehist sites are a little different ,and any disurbing can greatly affect the site , just digging a hole can destroy carbon dates, disurb the strata, post molds and the like but having siad that there are PLENTY of already disurbed sites that you can collect from, farm fields are disturbed at least 18 inches or more and artifacts scattered continusly year after year, so a collector is a great aid if done responsibly,the sourcing of lithics is of great importance,trade disturbution,and having a specimen and be able to tell where exactly it came from, these may not have been known to a paticular area , and most sites cant be dug on a professional scale, so collectors get a thumbs up from me ,info is info.as long as your not hiking and digging virgin rock shelters and the like .
