Starting from some recent events (2021), the contribution intends to reason on archaeological artefacts and their current status, asking questions for which there is often no answer. In particular, considering them as state-owned artefacts, collectors’ items, identity symbols and so on, historical sources and educational materials, waste destined for dispersion. Even if the legislation has been stabilized for roughly a century, words such as conservation, knowledge, use and valorization have changed meaning in the meantime. The conflict, although hidden, is in fact and the solution does not seem within reach. It probably has to do with freedom of research, more general individual freedoms, the role of the State and perhaps we need to read the present with the future in mind. Of the artefacts and ecofacts of potential archaeological interest, of the material culture information that can be drawn from them, of the very social organization of the ways of creating culture.