FAME ? we?re going to dig forever?

[Marcus Brody]

....which I take to mean the development control archaeologist and his/her planning authority.

But the development control archaeologist / planning authority doesn't commission the work. The general thrust of development control policy for archaeology is for preservation in situ wherever possible, so the default position of the DC archaeologist will tend to favour leaving stuff alone rather than digging it up. It's only where this is not possible, because a developer wants to build on the land, that excavation and preservation by record would come into effect. In that instance, and in the baldest possible terms, it's the developer who has taken the decision to abandon preservation in situ in favour of preservation by record, and therefore the developer who pays to achieve this. Faced with the presence of significant archaeology on a piece of land, the developer has the option of leaving the site alone, which would generally be the favoured approach of the DC archaeologist, or proceeding with the development and destroying the archaeology. If the latter option is selected, the Council and DC archaeologist will set the scope of the work required to mitigate this impact, but they won't actually commission it - the developer will be free to commission whichever commercial contractor he wishes to complete the fieldwork.

I would say that I'm not necessarily against the model proposed by Kevin of greater state involvement, it's just that I don't see it ever coming about in my lifetime. As I've noted on other threads, I much prefer the situation in Scotland, where buried artefacts and treasure trove is assumed to be the property of the state (albeit the crown) rather than belonging to the individual who happens to own the land at the time the object was dug up. It's always seemed wrong to me that in England, someone can claim ownership of a valuable find and sell it off on the open market, simply because they happen to own the land on which it was found and irrespective of the fact that they have no relationship to the original owner and had no knowledge of the presence of the object prior to its discovery. It seems far preferrable that such 'ownerless' objects should be considered to belong to the Nation.