Another brilliant post by the archaeologist Paul Barford, tireless fighter against antiquities trading and illegal looting:

http://paul-barford.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-two-models-of-history-belongs-to-us.html

Quote:

Translated into rhinoceroses that's the "rhinos belong to us all, so we should support by every means efforts to stop poaching" and the "rhinos belong to us all, so I can have a matching rhino horn letter-opener and keyfob set" models. Which side are you on?

well I'm in neither camp.
A little too simplistic I reckon.

Yes I'm all for history and archaelogy being for everyone. However I'm not so quick to differentiate between a grave robber after artifacts to sell to earn a living  and an archaelogist being paid to find artifacts funded by a museum.
Both are doing essentially the same job for a living.

Whether the artifacts end up initially in a private collection and only get donated to or discovered by a museum at a later date. Or are bought directly by the museum in question, seems a bit of a moot point.

At the end of the day everything usually ends up in a museum that has paid for it thorugh one channel or another.

Now obviously the archaeologist will argue that the 'tomb robber' is destroying historical information in his unsupervised excavations.
He's got a point.

The sensible option would be for the western world to invest in places they want to conduct their professional graverobbing in so that the impoverished indigenes don't have to resort to graverobbing to fed their families.

And yes I realise that's as simplistic and incorrect a statement of the situation as the rhinoceros analogy.

Which is my point.

It's a complex situation which 'them and us' stands and situations outlined by the rhinoceros scenario do absolutely nothing to help or clarify.

It's not the artifacts, it's the loss of information about the past-- archaeology, like medicine, is a highly developed way of observing and interpreting data.

We're not talking about "impoverished countries", we're talking about the UK. YOUR history is being despoiled-- Neolithic farmers, Celts, Roman Britan, Dark Ages-- by people looking for baubles to sell on eBay or storing them in their shed.

I think whining about the metal detecting community is a hugely stupid move on his part.  The archaeological crew I worked with over the summer had two amateur metal detectors on the team, because they're amazing at finding artifacts.  By building a rapport with them, the professor leading the project has harnessed their passion for the good of archaeology.  Now, their finds are properly recorded and tagged and put in a museum, and they're basking in the glow of praise and recognition for the skills they have developed and the finds they have unearthed.  And if they go out detecting on their own, they're sure to GPS the coordinates of any finds to the archaeologist, and apprise him of anything that seems of substantial cultural significance.  Everybody wins.  If you take the attitude of this guy, what you get is hostility, and metal detector crews tearing through important materials, far too spiteful to consider inviting an archaeologist to examine what they're finding.

It's a very, very simple situation, actually.

Thearos wrote on Dec 16^th, 2012 at 5:19pm:

It's a very, very simple situation, actually.

No, it's really not.

Look at the situation in the UK-- it's disastrous. If you work on Dark Ages material, a huge number of sites are getting plundered IN SPITE OF a make-nice scheme with the detectorists.

It's what Barford has been writing about a lot recently.

Again-- not the objects-- it's the tearing through of stratigraphical context (and the discarding of anything that's not sellable). It's not a heroic form of local knowledge. It's pitiful.

You have to make-nice with them, or make metal detecting illegal.  Those are your options.  If you make metal-detecting illegal, you do lose out on the finds that amateurs bring to the attention of the professionals, like the Staffordshire Hoard.

I think that all of you are right, and that's the problem.

Guys, you should really come to Italy and see how a wonderful stock of cultural heritage is being awfully managed.
Long story short, don't buy antiquities, not as individuals, and more than even not as a Museum (a famous Museum in NY paid lots of thousands dollars to a friend of mine, who sold them a fake he made. I love this guy. Eat my shorts, "museum"  8-) ).
Greetings,
Mauro.

The Corby helmet was restored by a saleroom, not a professional lab-- so that a lot is unclear (the top finial looks very weird indeed). And it's not in a private collection.

Here where I live, the Regional Superintendent was a boozer.
The Inspector has a high school degree (literature) and it's easier to speak with the Pope than with her.
People working in the offices of the Archaeological Superintendance have months of holidays and very elastic working times.
There're WONDERS stored in the Museum's stores, and no money to put them on display.
Meanwhile the University of Rome found an unicum in Europe, but they can't find 20'000 € to promote the third season of excavation.
Pompeii and the Coliseum are falling down.
Archaeological cooperatives pay a wage of 4 €/hour and give you the money 6 months after the end of the excavation.
Oh and shipwrecks - there're tons of amphorae and other stuff under 3 meters of water, the relative Archaeologist knows this, but won't recover them unless she finish an article on them - which she begun writing in 1980 (for real!!).
After all this, buying antiquities may have the sound of a romantic revenge, but it's not  ::)
We just need (in my opinion) a close control from someone who's not a public institution, we may enjoy the money and control of a private sponsor, while keeping the usability of our wonders free as a public good.
Greetings,
Mauro.

In the case of the UK, the change is very striking, between the love of the great public for archaeology (witness the Time Team programmes on television), and the very, very recent promotion of metal detectoring as a substitute. Witness the end of the Timeteam shows, replaced by "Hidden Treasures" etc, which are all about metal detectorism. How did this happen ? A few big finds by detectorists, and all the Timeteam approach (careful excavation, sample trenches, focus on context, on small objects-- e.g. broken pipes, etc-- as a way of recovering the past, often of the humble, e.g. railway workers, in very local settings) goes to naught.

Thearos, that was what Atlatlista was talking about, training the amatures.  I don't know all the details, but it sounds like TV sensationalized poor practices, and many sensitive sites are being destroyed because of it.  So, what you will have to do is educate the people most likely to listen, which is pretty near all of them.  Most people do not want to destroy these sites, but they do want to have a feeling of "touching " history.  In the US, that's why people pick up "arrowheads".  Most don't know what damage they are doing when they do this.  

Now, the ones doing it strictly to sell the artifacts and to hell with the site are a different story.  Those people should be stopped and there are laws to do so.  The problem is most judges won't or don't see this as anything except a waste of their time, so most offenders are let off with a slap on the wrist.

And last, ranting and raving never solved anything.  Tell the writer to take his passion and intelligance and come up with a plan to educate those that will learn and to protect the sites and to prosecute those that willfully destroy.

And this is my pet peeve with museums, most have lots of stuff in boxes that is never displayed, it is apparently too much effort to rotate their displays, the place where I do a lot of my stuff re organized in 2009, the last time prior was 1986 and the time before that was in the early 60's.  You could visit the place in 15 year intervals and not see any changes.  So, why go back?

Thearos wrote on Dec 17^th, 2012 at 9:12am:

In the case of the UK, the change is very striking, between the love of the great public for archaeology (witness the Time Team programmes on television), and the very, very recent promotion of metal detectoring as a substitute. Witness the end of the Timeteam shows, replaced by "Hidden Treasures" etc, which are all about metal detectorism. How did this happen ? A few big finds by detectorists, and all the Timeteam approach (careful excavation, sample trenches, focus on context, on small objects-- e.g. broken pipes, etc-- as a way of recovering the past, often of the humble, e.g. railway workers, in very local settings) goes to naught.

yeah but any reasonable find has to be declared as treasure trove. The crown then takes it's cut and the finder does not get as much as he would have had he been able to put it up for auction.

As for it being my history. Well given the sheer immensity of history in the uk - honestly, I'm all for a small army of professional amateurs (they are doing it for money) scouring the country and digging up stuff.

We'll find a lot more sites and artifacts that way than with a tiny number of academic controlled sites.
And I'd prefer the law to simply say: 'finders = keepers'.
You'd actually get more finds declared that way as people wouldn't have to worry about treasure trove or their sites being taken away from them.

Give that most found artifacts are in the top 3 feet of soil due to natural movement caused the seasonal expansion and contraction of the soil. The sites themselves are rarely disturbed and remain deeper in the ground for subsequent excavation.

So let the treasure seekers have their treasure and they can point the academics at the larger deeper sites.

everybody wins :-)

Sanction the grave robbers :thumb:

First rule: primum non nocere. If the site is lying there undisturbed, having a bunch of guys digging into it does not "discover" it. For the detectorists go a lot deeper than 1 foot (look at them on YT).

Second rule: it's not about objects, which are knick knacks. It's about context-- i.e. what objects tell you together.

Your history, yes. What's being lost are answers to questions like "when did the Celts arrive" or "what difference did the Roman conquest make". The metal detectorist who holds the Anglo-saxon belt buckle and dreamily says "Oh I wish I know more about the guys who made this" has just done his bit for us never to find out.

Solution-- ban metal detecting. Encourage people to work on digs. Lots of outreach by museums and archaeological authorities. The French solution. The old TimeTeam solution (and detectorists hate TimeTeam, and Tony Robinson has spoken against the damage they do). Works very well, and produces good results, very sophisticated provincial archaeology.

Banning metal detectors would solve some of the problems, but not all, not by a longshot.  The fact is, some detectorists do discover sites.  Secondly, and this is true of the New England area of the US, I don't know how true it is of England, but over here, our soil acidity is so high in certain regions that the objects in the ground are in danger of being destroyed forever by natural processes.  Even metal objects have a hard time surviving 400 years, let alone a thousand.  So where I am, which isn't the UK, the detectorists may actually be preserving a lot of history by getting it out of the bad soil, whereas it might take decades for archaeologists to find it (likely they never would) and the result is a loss of material culture.

I bow to that argument. But I still deplore the loss of stratigraphical context and the ravages (again: if the metal objects go, there's still a lot left you can work with. But you know this, of course).

During one of our researches my headquarter was a house in front of a necropolis dating from 1000 bC to 400 aD.
We were on survey so no excavations at all.
When I told the teacher there were tombs in front of my house, and I suggested the use of a metal detector to number the metal objects down there, he denied replying that "only graverobbers" use metal detectors.
The following year they changed my headquarter, we all went into a Medieval building, and one day we returned to that necropolis.
I walked around my old headquarter and found 4 or 5 WW2 bullets on a windowsill. They were oxidized and encrusted with soil and I realized that my teacher was right, only graverobbers use metal detectors.
Still, it would have been very useful for us to have a numbered list of the metal objects laying there.
I'm with Theros on this matter, either ban metal detectors or hire metal detectorists for archaeological activities - better, pay archaeologists to use metal detectors.
Greetings,
Mauro.

The reason, Mr Barford, I linked to this post is simply that I read your blog and like it, the arguments, the fearlessness, and the up-to-date news. I've done so earlier; I hope I get you readers; I hope I start discussions.

Like here:

http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1269906726/3

Thearos wrote on Dec 20^th, 2012 at 7:22pm:

The reason, Mr Barford, I linked to this post is simply that I read your blog and like it, the arguments, the fearlessness, and the up-to-date news. I've done so earlier; I hope I get you readers; I hope I start discussions. Like here: http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1269906726/3

I'm assuming he made an account to question why he was being linked to and deleted the question once it was answered?

Mauro Fiorentini wrote on Dec 17^th, 2012 at 5:36pm:

During one of our researches my headquarter was a house in front of a necropolis dating from 1000 bC to 400 aD. We were on survey so no excavations at all. When I told the teacher there were tombs in front of my house, and I suggested the use of a metal detector to number the metal objects down there, he denied replying that "only graverobbers" use metal detectors. The following year they changed my headquarter, we all went into a Medieval building, and one day we returned to that necropolis. I walked around my old headquarter and found 4 or 5 WW2 bullets on a windowsill. They were oxidized and encrusted with soil and I realized that my teacher was right, only graverobbers use metal detectors. Still, it would have been very useful for us to have a numbered list of the metal objects laying there. I'm with Theros on this matter, either ban metal detectors or hire metal detectorists for archaeological activities - better, pay archaeologists to use metal detectors. Greetings, Mauro.

See, when I worked on battlefield archaeology, we were all trained to use metal detectors in a responsible way as archaeologists.  The reluctance amongst archaeologists to use metal detectors to further archaeology is stupidly backwards.  Why would you not use every tool at your disposal to better understand the past?  You could argue that you lose stratigraphy if you dig metal detector holes all over your site - fine.  So flag all the metal detector hits, record their locations, and then do regular excavation to uncover the broader area.  You maintain context and you're many times more likely to come up with important artifacts.  Metal detector surveys can also be used by archaeologists to determine the geographical extent of a site, or to give you a sense of the total amount of artifacts you're removing.  In our battlefield context, the grant required we leave a certain percentage of archaeological material in the ground, so that it remained a "battlefield site."  If it was totally stripped of all the artifacts, it would have lost that recognition.  How do we know how much we're leaving in the ground without a metal detector survey?

The idea that the tool is tainted by the hobbyists is stupid.  It would be like not using ground-penetrating radar because there's a big group of ground-penetrating radar hobbyists who plunder sites.  Or not using shovels - everybody uses those.  And anyway, the single most destructive thing I saw during my training when it came to stratigraphy was the shovel test pit.  STPs are gaping holes that run through sites in the vain attempt to recover cultural material.  Metal detector holes are much smaller and many many times more likely to come up with cultural materials.

I really hope that the archaeologists who are against metal detecting take the time to learn what useful tools they can be for the archaeologist, not just the "grave robber."

OK, so it's not about the instrument-- it's about the use of metal detectors to make holes indiscriminately in archaeologically rich sites in order to find metal objects for collecting or for selling, without any notice of stratigraphy and context. I have also worked on digs where metal detectors were used.

I remember an argument that objects could be sold off, once excavated seriously and recorded. Of course, that means that if we have new questions, you can't interrogate masses of material because it's gone.

You do know though, that stratigraphy is often already unsettled by plow zones and such in these sites, right?  I've found paleo-indian material above 19th century material before, thanks to the plow zone.  Not to say that stratigraphy is never important, just that many sites have been ravaged by human beings over time long before detectorists ever got to them.

Yes there's also phenomenon like colluvium, floods, landslides and so on that can alter stratigraphy, but it's still important to record it: we've found flint objects on an Iron Age necropolis - why? Because there has been a landslide in the '50ies - it's all recorded and taken into account when analyzed... treasure hunting is not  :(
Greetings,
Mauro.

I suppose surface collection of sherds does depend on ploughing, yes. But the metal detectorists go deeper than the ploughed levels, and do so repeatedly.

Thearos wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2012 at 10:24am:

I suppose surface collection of sherds does depend on ploughing, yes. But the metal detectorists go deeper than the ploughed levels, and do so repeatedly.

Though, again, it depends on the plow layer.  I've had plow layers that run all the way down to sterile soil.  You can certainly record that stratigraphy in an archaeological context, make a note that it's a plow layer, but you're still not actually learning anything about the artifact itself based on its stratigraphy.  Geographic coordinates are another matter, of course, they can still be useful, but the depth wouldn't be at that point.

By the way, I'm not in favor of treasure hunting, particularly not in Europe where the range of historic archaeology is so much deeper than it is here.  However, I don't think that outlawing metal detecting is a solution in the US, and I think with outreach, archaeologists can really help to educate these people and turn them into helpers.

Plus, speaking from a paleoanthropology point of view, all the really cool stuff is made of rock and that's undetectable.

I agree! I've just found 5 or 6 flint cores today while slinging and they dates to the Neolithic and am happyer than if I found a coin  :D
By the way, back to metal detectors, here in Italy if you buy or rent one, you've to give your name, address and other info to the shop, that'll give to the police if there's the need to.
It's quite a good deterrent in the short time, but it doesn't work if the shop closes  :(
Greetings,
Mauro.

wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2012 at 10:30am:

I'm not in favor of treasure hunting, particularly not in Europe where the range of historic archaeology is so much deeper than it is here.

Then we're good.

May I recommend a paper by Nathan Elkins ?

http://www.academia.edu/970202/Treasure_Hunting_101_in_Americas_Classrooms

Let's hope the interest in Richard-III find undoes some of the damage wrought by the fascination with treasure hunting and detectoring !

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/richard-iii

so discovering a body while in the process of industrial building works is okay (R III)
But some bloke in a field finding something is not ?

Hardly consistent thearos.

Also given the sheer lack of funds for archeaological fieldwork. You're basically saying: 'okay lets find .00001%  of interesting historical sites through trained paintbrush wielding acedemics. And just forget about the vast majority that are accidentally discovered by amateur enthusiasts.'

To ban treasure hunting would be to drastically reduce the number of sites found every year.

A lot of the really interesting finds are discovered during building works, now surely a couple of jcbs is going to do a lot more damage than an anorack with a small spade ?
So why is that okay and metal detectoring not. :noidea:


Quote:

In British slang an anorak (pron.: /ˈænəræk/) is a person who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects. This interest may be unacknowledged or not understood by the general public. Although the term is often used synonymously with geek or nerd, the Japanese term otaku or the American term "fanboy/fangirl" are probably closer synonyms.

Curious Aardvark wrote on Feb 12^th, 2013 at 6:42am:

so discovering a body while in the process of industrial building works is okay (R III) But some bloke in a field finding something is not ?

I thought the RIII finding came from a specific intent to locate his grave, at least that was my understanding from the Channel 4 program which I just watched on-line. The most interesting aspect of it seemed to me that a non-professional brought her research to an academic department of Archaeology and she was taken seriously, although she also raised the money through the RIII society.

Nobody found him accidentally, dragged the bones out of the ground and took the remains to someone 'appropriate'.

In the Towton case Thearos mentioned, yes the JCBs dug something up, but they stopped as soon as they knew it, and got the archaeologists involved. They did not dig to the bottom of the grave, delivering said bones in a sack to the museum.

I think it's fair to make a distinction between discovering and disturbing. Metal detectorists (and I am very well aware that many are genuinely interested in other than pure possession of artefacts) may discover new sites (I have not the faintest idea of the statistics of this, and don't have the time to research it now) but if their focus is on the acquisition of an article they follow a route different from that an archaeologist works nowadays where 'context' is all-important. Perhaps if it were possible for a discoverer to retain legal title to an artefact without pulling it out, it might make a slight difference. I'm not sure under current U.K. law if that is possible.



Quote:

In British slang an anorak (pron.: /ˈænəræk/) is a person who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects. This interest may be unacknowledged or not understood by the general public. Although the term is often used synonymously with geek or nerd, the Japanese term otaku or the American term "fanboy/fangirl" are probably closer synonyms.

We are all sling anoraks together. :)

Wanderer is right: the R. III discovery was part of a programme of targetted research. Imagine if it had been found by a metal detectorist: he would have picked up a few baubles, and chucked the rest.

And wanderer is further right: when construction work stumbles upon something, specialists are called in. In the field, people are looking for stuff and digging holes and dispersing knowledge, with the specific intent of finding baubles to collect or sell. Better to leave the stuff undisturbed; as for surface stuff, there are techniques to monitor these finds, namely surface intensive survey. Very good results in Greece:

https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/7977/1_036_046.pdf?sequence=1

The distinction is not difficult to grasp. It forms the basis of modern archaeology.

A blog post by an American archaeologist on this. I agree with the sentiments (h/t Paul Barford)

http://www.digtech-llc.com/blog/172-open-letter-to-arrowhead-hunters#commenting

As before, I disagree. Archaeological sites are cool to know about and it is really amazing when we find a big, exciting discovery. I like that experience, I like reading about it, and as an archaeology student I recently got to participate in it (in a small way.) I take pleasure and pride in these kinds of discoveries. I am not sad when that doesn't happen, however. Historic records can sometimes survive, oral stories, etc which many times will provide a link to our ancestors in other ways. Artifacts come in more forms than just objects. I'm not saying that a story is just as good as an excavation or that they're the same. Just that I think archaeological sites are being given undue emphasis. I'm okay with some questions being left unanswered about the past. It doesn't bother me to not know about a people who didn't leave behind ancestors and oral traditions. I am not disturbed by a mine being built on the site of an Afghan Buddhist temple nor of a highrise atop the site of a Delaware Indian manufacturing complex. To my way of thinking it's only natural that newer generations reuse he same materials in new ways and I accept that they will probably alter or destroy the artifacts in the process. I am fine with an arrowhead becoming a display piece with no provenience. I'm not okay with looting from an excavation in progress because the archaeologist have taken dominion over the site and it is stealing from living people. But I am not bothered when artifacts are removed from somewhere that archaeologists haven't gotten to and there is no living owner, nor anyone who knows to miss the trinket.

There's an (out of practice) law in Turkey which states that if you can build and complete a house on another men's property without him realizing it then the land immediately surrounding the house becomes yours. That's my mentality for artifact discovery. If a person can take an artifact with no one to miss it at the time and then I don't see why they shouldn't.

I would say that it's not about sacralizing the material remains of the past (not just objects but structures etc), just that to tolerate indiscriminate plundering of archaeological resources deprives us all of very good knowledge of the past, which we have sophisticated techniques to study. It's not about the objects in themselves. it's about reading and interpreting the whole site, with objects in relation in time that make them tell stories.

Just because archaeologists haven't had time to get to a site, or aren't aware of it, does not mean that once they do discover that a site has been poked full of holes and the stratigraphy scrambled for ever, they will not be very bothered by the loss of information.  

But it's true that the points I make above may not be quite those of the blogger (whose post I really liked).

Thearos wrote on May 4^th, 2013 at 6:39am:

It's not about the objects in themselves. it's about reading and interpreting the whole site, with objects in relation in time that make them tell stories. Just because archaeologists haven't had time to get to a site, or aren't aware of it, does not mean that once they do discover that a site has been poked full of holes and the stratigraphy scrambled for ever, they will not be very bothered by the loss of information.

It's about provenience, being able to date artifacts relative to each other, finds unexpectedly in the same horizon as others, and what we can piece together from that in addition to the missing artifact and its lost provenience. I understand that point. The Turkish man who finds his property carved up by squatters isn't going to be happy about that either, but he obviously wasn't using that land. Banning treasure hunting stems from (I think) being upset that we cannot investigate specific sites due to their disruption. My position is that you didn't know that plundered site existed when it was disturbed. Not knowing about the site did not negatively impact anyone's life prior to its formal discovery and not knowing any solid information about the site will not negatively impact anyone following that. History belongs to the writer and material culture belongs to the possessor.

We agree, then, on the main point-- destruction of contextual knowledge. I do not accept the idea that, in your example, the Turkish man has suffered no harm (for instance, he might have set that land aside for his retirement, or taken out a loan using it as security, or leaving it fallow so that the land improves, etc etc); nor that, because no one is excavating a site at that precise moment, having it trashed results in no harm: it would have been explored later, and knowledge of the past would have increased-- for our descendants when it's trashed it is gone for ever.

A piece on the Barrett Crosby helmet, making the point that its discovery by a detectorist without excavation context makes it impossible to understand its provenance

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/37443/the-destruction-of-history/?page=1

So, if the archies are so hot about preserving history, how come they won't do it for free?  And second, how come everything they find becomes their property?  I don't know about the UK, but where I am, if you accidently make a discovery on your land, you have to pay for it to be excavated and whatever is found belongs to the team that does the excavating, not the property owner.  These are state archies, they are receiving a salary from the state, that is paid with my tax dollars.

I can understand archaeologists getting paid, it takes a lot of school to learn proper dig procedure and a lot of time digging up artifacts. It can't be a hobby if it's going to be done right.

But why, if the idea is to save history for us all, are we wasting time analyzing, examining, and learning about things when there's still digging to do? If you're worried about sites being disturbed then the logical course of action to me is to "strip mine" everything before anyone or anything else can get to it. Dig everything up as fast as possible without ruining your work, take samples, record stratigraphy, label it well, and then put everything in storage indefinitely. Move to the next dig without scrutinizing the last find. Get to everything still in the ground and then come back later to learn about it. Only unpack the boxes, analyze composition, test, and date items once everything else important to the field is out of the ground. Any second spent learning about history rather than getting it out of the ground is a second lost for preserving history.

The author of that article uses the phrase "the loss" when talking about the material culture of Britain. "What loss?" I say. Who benefited from that helmet while it was in the ground? How did it help anyone? Who knew anything about it? How was any of that taken from someone? Nothing has been "lost" here. Nobody knew about the helmet before and nobody knows about the helmet now. I cannot see how any harm was done at all by the metal detectorist.

Masiakasaurus wrote on Jun 21^st, 2013 at 1:52pm:

I cannot see how any harm was done at all by the metal detectorist.

What was lost is any chance of writing the history of what that object was doing in Britain.

[quote author=43686D6D5E526A686F6F6473010 how come everything they find becomes their property?  I don't know about the UK, but where I am, if you accidently make a discovery on your land, you have to pay for it to be excavated and whatever is found belongs to the team that does the excavating, not the property owner.  These are state archies, they are receiving a salary from the state, that is paid with my tax dollars.[/quote]

I don't think the finds become property of the team-- they should, normally, become state property. And what the dig has found is not objects-- it's information about the past.

I think usually building companies make a contribution towards the costs of rescue excavation (archaeologists are, usually, paid, not very well, by the state, but a dig also needs a fair bit of casual labour). It could be taken off general taxation, true.

Is this turning into politics?

Personally, here is my stance- the problem with the private landowner pays to dig it up is that sometimes they WON't notify the gov't cause they don't want to pay the cost... I am sure it happens. If the landowner is paid for the right to dig it up... it might go the other way.