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1,600-year-old Roman coffin unearthed in London
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Discussion point....when should history stop progress or when is progress more important than history? It really really bothers me that they would be nervous they'd have "such" a great find they would have to stop their work. Im big on "history" and things we can learn from it about the people and their lives before us. I believe we can learn from the past. I know Im very passionate about "historical preservation", and would much rather see a site excavated for all that can be found, than built over and made modern. |
Well... historical discovery is progress. The more we learn about the past, the better informed our decisions can be in the future. Knowledge ought to be more important than renovating. Luckily, it seems the law protects such artifacts.
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ugh this just reminds me of when they found a slave cemetery in Lower Manhattan, it stymied construction projects for years, sucked for the city.
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I also feel strongly about not losing archeological sites where important discoveries could be made. In cities such as Rome however, it would not be possible to have a functioning city if everything were to be painstakingly excavated. In such a case the only rational thing to do is allow the development to continue.
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Several years ago, a college town in Mississippi was trying to pave an access road to the back of the campus and some folks didn't want the paving to occur. So, some of them apparently dumped out a few Indian arrowheads into the dirt and the paving had to stop because the road suddenly became an archeological site. One arrowhead, you see, doesn't mean much - but several of them indicates a village.
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My dad has done alot of construction in London, archeology is always a complete PITA because we have very strict laws over here with regards to finds and how they must be dealt with.
Two sides of the argument, one wants to see what happened, the other one wants to get paid on schedule. |
Seems like there's a Bronze Age dwelling or a Viking burial site in the way of every road construction here. :( It's nice that archaeolgists get some work, but it's not very exciting when they find the 39614th 1000-year-old plain vanilla farmhouse. I imagine it must be even worse in Central and Southern Europe.
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Time should always be taken to study - and they do this very well in Britain and other European countries where a significant historical record exists.
In most instances, they stop, study, collect artifacts, and whatever construction going on resumes. Not much to ask, and any competant business person in those areas knows to draw in a bit of wiggle room in their budgets and time projections because this is a common occurrence. |
There's an apartment complex in Knoxville, TN that's sitting on top of a massacre site from the 1780's. One of my parents' neighbors is the archeologist at UT that excavated the site. The apartment developers were greatly pissed off that their project got put on hold for about 6 months but it turned out that there were some major finds, like bodies, equipment, etc. that differed from the survivors' stories. Historically speaking, those are just the breaks for developers and there's little or nothing that's not worth delaying to properly bury the dead and discover their story.
Cynthetiq, the Manahattan story is pretty good version of how the system should work. Those slaves were parents and siblings and deserved the respect that they got. |
Err on the side of history... When you encounter these sites there is one chance to get it right... if you just plow in, centuries worth of historical preservation waiting to be discovered is lost.
It may be a very plain occurrence, which is most likely, but it also may be another Pompeii... Stalling human progress isn't a bad thing... We're gonna rape and murder the earth in due time, don't worry. |
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