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+--- Thread: a dangerous precedent?? (/showthread.php?tid=2148)
a dangerous precedent?? - 1man1desk - 27th February 2006
Quote:quote:The WSI would have included a paragraph along the lines of 'the archaeological contractor will endeavour to persuade the landowner to provide written consent for the finds to be deposited along with the rest of the archive'. This is all that can realistically be achieved within the current legal framework - any attempt to use a WSI (and therefore a planning condition ) to get a landowner to sign away legal title to objects as yet unknown is unlikely to stand up to any sort of legal scrutiny.
All I said is that the WSI would have to deal with the disposal of the finds, and that the developer would have to comply with what it said - not that the landowner could be made to sign away his/her rights. This is particularly relevant where the landowner is not the developer (e.g. on highway schemes), and we are dependent on their goodwill to gain access to the land for evaluations etc. prior to the planning application.
However, where the landowner is also the developer (as appears to be the case here), and where they are working under a planning condition after the grant of consent for a commercial, profit-making development, there is no reason why a clause could not be included in the WSI in which they commit themselves to donate any archaeological remains to the recipient museum.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
a dangerous precedent?? - mercenary - 27th February 2006
Quote:quote:I am currently dealing with a landowner, who at the outset, has said that they will retain all archaeological material 'because this bloke in Lancaster is going to make ?100 grand'.
Can't you remind him of conservation and archiving and storage requirements and attendant costs? That should sort him out.
a dangerous precedent?? - Curator Kid - 28th February 2006
You can't force someone to professionally conserve and store an object they own - they can do what they want with it, including shoving it in a drawer and letting it fall to bits if they like. However, you can put something in a WSI that requires every single find to be drawn, photographed and described in detail if it is not to be deposited in a proper museum or archive, to ensure the appropriate information is placed in the public domain even if the artefact isn't. This usually puts people off when they are confronted with bags and bags of broken pot and CBM.
a dangerous precedent?? - historic building - 28th February 2006
That is pretty well my approach. Hopefully he is just trying it on but ebay does give people ideas.
a dangerous precedent?? - Tile man - 28th February 2006
Can you add squeezes and photogrammatry?
a dangerous precedent?? - monitor lizard - 28th February 2006
3D laser scanning!
a dangerous precedent?? - Curator Kid - 28th February 2006
"Can you add squeezes and photogrammatry?"
Probably not, as planning-related work has to be seen to be "reasonable", and other recording methods could be used to produce similar or comparable results. I don't think you'd be allowed to damage the finds either, so technically you couldn't require thin sections or fabric samples for reference collections etc., although I suppose you could insist that these were taken and analysed as part of the post-ex work if you knew that eventual deposition in the public domain wasn't going to happen.
a dangerous precedent?? - Tile man - 28th February 2006
I think a squeeze is a standard way of recording inscriptions..
I wish thin sections fabric sampling and , indeed, only being allowed to use a standard fabric series were more common conditions. Not being able to damge an assemblage wouldmake fabric identification difficult - would need some expensive to do that ( and I suspect tricorders havn't been invented yet...
)
a dangerous precedent?? - monitor lizard - 28th February 2006
I thought squeezes were pretty standard too...a thick wad of rizlas and a wet paintbrush [:p]!
Anyway, I have heard tale of landowners wanting to keep hold of a ?silver box, and being made to commission a replica of said item for display in the local museum as compensation. Have no idea if this is true or a very garbled distortion of a real event, but it's still a nice idea. Plaster casts of thousands of sherds....
a dangerous precedent?? - Curator Kid - 28th February 2006
I've not heard of the silver box thing ML, but I agree it sounds like a nice idea. I expect you could actually insist on a squeeze of an inscription (or the Roman gravestone) as well - although I bet the owner would argue that a sheet of paper and a wax crayon could produce a comparable result (ha ha!)