Empire of Dirt: time to call time on commercial archaeology in Northern Ireland?

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dont agree that the point of archaeology is publication. I would say that the point of excavation is the possibility that there might be some form of publication if the archaeologist in question deems it necessary not the curators. This mob seem to want to say that archaeology can only exist after publication; the essance of which seems to be that the archaeologists must give their interpretation of observations away without any concern about the "market" value of those interpretations might be. To me archaeology is archologists simply looking for they dont know what. So what that they have published and it took them so many months, I dont see that their publication has any value to me or even archaeology just because its "published". I particularly dont see that it should be paid for under polluter pays principles. I think that publication should be paid for through demand for the publication or if you like the charge for the publication should be based on demand.

As far as I can tell the Drumclay crannog fiasco has that oft repeated problem where the landowner was the public or its agents who had bought or was sold the land from previous owners and what I would say was the crime was that no value was incorporated in the sale to account for the archaeology. Whats wrong with ni archaeology is that its still public service dominated it seems to me and it wont change until they get rid of the curators. If anything there does not seem to be a critical mass of commercial archaeologists to have tried to have made some money out of this situation, presumably too busy going around asking what is archaeology? I think the previous owners should consider that their archaeological assest was taken from them and not paid for and should seek compensation from the public purse. Sob public archaeology.