Collectors' Reaction to Failure of NI Developer Funding in Financial Crunch

The collapse of some developer firms that were financing archaeological mitigation operations has left the archaeologists contracted to do this work high and dry, with "hundreds of thousands of archaeological items recovered from historic sites in Northern Ireland are lying unclassified in plastic bags and boxes" (BBC News Northern Ireland: ' Unclassified Archaeological Remains Piling Up in Storage' Wednesday, April 2, 2014). Instead of being worried about the material the ("passionately interested in the past" artefact hunters and coineys are jubilant. Arthur Houghton (April 2, 2014 at 2:51 PM ) writes:

"Peter, this is archaeology's dirty secret. Excavate, do not classify, do not publish, excavate, excavate, it is such fun. Those who carry on in this manner or accept and enable it should be severely sanctioned.Thank you for calling attention to this appalling situation.

It is difficult to see who Mr Houghton sees as responsible in this case. Perhaps as a businessman himself, he could enlarge on how he sees developer funding as operating, and how the continuity of funds for contracted projects be legally enforced when the sponsor goes out of business.

UPDATE 3rd April 2014

David Knell  has noted this discussion and who is taking part ('Bizarre twist on a "scandal"...', Thursday, 3 April 2014. John Howland, a bitter archaeologist-hating  metal detectorist concludes:

"This scandal has made utter fools of Messrs Barford, Swift, Knell, and Gill, not to mention the Council for British Archaeology I am delighted to say, and gives lie to their the slur that metal detecting damages the heritage."

He suggests that the logic of this conclusion is somewhat lacking. "According to Howland, the fact that archaeology has been insufficiently funded means that metal detecting does not damage our heritage. Huh?"

Howland's answer to archaeology being insufficiently funded is to starve it of money altogether (despite having read the article, he comes to the startling conclusion that the "last thing archaeology needs is more money") and instead to plough it into the PAS so that it can do a better job of "properly recording and classifying OUR heritage".

Knell goes on to point out that Howland's use of the term is at odds with the use of the term in educated circles, where the fruits of scholarly research on the past are more of a concern than "the decontextualised bits of metal that detectorists like Howland reap a reward from by digging them up out of the ground". He is rather scathing about the good that can come of "a whole load of recorded and classified bits of metal ripped out of the landscape"

I can see other countries such as Italy or Greece gasping in envy and admiration at the sheer genius of our priority.

He then points out that Howland's capitalisation of the word "OUR" heritage oikishly implies that metal detectorists own it and should unilaterally decide what should be done with it: 

Does that mean that apart from a few thousand detectorists, the rest of the over 63 million inhabitants of the UK also get a say? You know, the over 63 million people who democratically choose to pay wages to archaeologists but not to detectorists? Those people? He might find that a large proportion of thinking people would feel that the "scandal" is that archaeology is severely underfunded, not metal detecting.