So much will never be found thanks to this law.
Even professional trained archaeologists intentionally only excavate parts of sites when they know there's more to find because we expect there to be much better technology in the future.
Amateurs digging for artifacts are destroying knowledge, not discovering it.
Yes, some might be lost by random digging. But if it would not otherwise ever be found then nothing has been lost.
I think the greater concern for artifact loss is someone doing earthworks, finding something, and then not reporting it because they don't want to wait for archaeologists to check out the site.
The fact is that owning a piece of farmland doesn't give you ownership of our country's heritage. Nor should it. You get to raise cows on the land. You don't get to mine it (without permission), you don't get to turn it into a housing development (without permission), and you don't get to turn it into an archaeological dig site (without permission).
And provided you don't cause any negative externalities, you should have the default right to do whatever you want on your land.
Of course. Is that some kind of gotcha?
> provided you don't cause any negative externalities, you should have the default right to do whatever you want on your land.
Destroying our chances to understand history is the externality.
But here is the thing, if you are an Irish citizen you are free to advocate for a change in law. If you convince enough of your peers that it should be changed it will be changed. Isn’t that great?
Of course, this has to be balanced with some amount of excavation to actually improve those methods, and with enough information being gleaned today to keep us interested in actually funding the practice of archaeology for tomorrow.
They flattened a few city blocks to excavate it.
But they will never flatten the cathedral, or other large famous buildings in the vicinity.
Point is: the longer we wait to excavate, the more the likelihood that something's been constructed on top.
But secondly, as long as the building doesn't destroy the site (say, the ruins/remains are buried deep enough), then there is no problem, and the logic still applies: it will be found some few decades or centuries later, so chances are there will be more that can be gleaned from it then.