system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do cities/settlements get entirely buried to the point of large excavations being required to discover them?

We often hear about archaeologists finding some pottery or tool or weapon, and then starting a big dig and uncovering an entire city.

With exception to cities like Pompeii which were entirely covered by a volcano erupting, how are these cities disappearing beneath the ground? Is it literally a thousand years of wind-blown dust settling?
gpt
For a long long time the houses were made out of wood. After the houses got abandoned the first thing what happened is that the wood started to deteriorate and the building collapsed. After ten autumns with leaves falling over it and starting to compost you have very little useful wood left. That leaves you only with the hard-pressed sand floor or the stones in the floor which has to be covered.

Leaves fall on the former flood and start to decompose and create compost making it possible for plants to grow. More leaves, more compost, more plants. And after a couple of decades the house is gone, back into the forest.