In archaeology, how do we know we're not finding what other societies found?

by sociallyawkwardmelon

Say we find an artefact in the area of a civilisation that we know existed in 500BC.

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How do we know that the 500BC civilisation didn't find that artefact from a 1000BC civilisation and put it in their own museum-like thing before we found it?

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And does that mean that things in our museums may be found by future humans, and they may mistake our generation for having less sophisticated technology?

Searocksandtrees

Hi OP, you might consider x-posting to /r/AskAnthropology or /r/AskScience under Social Sciences (or even /r/Archaeology, but check with the mods first, because I'm not sure whether they take question posts). While there are a few archaeologists here, archaeology isn't the focus of this sub.