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Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. It seems like something you could get insurance for, though.

About 30 or 35 years ago my parents were asked by The University of Manitoba for permission to dig a 1 foot trench near the river which bounded one side of their property to look for artifacts of Canadian aboriginals. The plan was do do a long trench across twenty or thirty houses. They answered the letter with "of course you can" or something like that. Got a letter back a couple months later. It thanked them, but said that they were the only ones that answered in the affirmative. Apparently all their neighbours cared more about protecting their future right to build a shed over the priceless history of the people who lived there first.

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If you ever dealt with any "preservation" types in Canada you would know why all of those guys said NO, more like F NO. They could find a piece of brick(our put one there), assign a department, probably get a 1mil budget, dig up your whole land then ban you from using it forever.

I guarantee you that no backyard trench dig is getting 1m budgets and an entire department. Usually even being able to afford basic tools like up-to-date imagery is problematic.

I think in general this ends up being the same market failure the original post alluded to - there's tail risk of someone actually finding something, declaring your property a landmark/historical site which severely limits the possible use thus negatively impacts the value of your property... with zero compensation to you. Rational response there should be F NO.

> They could find a piece of brick (or put one there)

So the claim here seems to be: A university archeologist may decide to place a (modern) brick in your backyard, which they will use to support their claim that it's an archeological site, so that they can have the opportunity to waste thousands of combined hours of work and a million dollars of their undersized budget digging up a site that they don't actually think has any artifacts of interest. To which I say:

What?

Ok I exaggerated about the brick ;)

I used to be a part of volunteer group that "lobbied" for climbing access so I had a lot of exposure to that bureaucracy.

Neighbors were worried that it starts with a 1 foot trench and ends in eminent domain of their home.

> Apparently all their neighbours cared more about protecting their future right to build a shed over the priceless history of the people who lived there first.

That's a very bad faith take on their decisions.

Sorry, I was a toddler at the time. This is what my parents told me when I was older, but I don't know if they actually asked their neighbours.

Edit: And back then there was a lot more open racism in Winnipeg than there is today, so it could be for even worse reasons.

Present people are worth more than past people. No thanks. Imagine you find something on your land. This so-called priceless artifact will be “protected” with no compensation to you.

You’re welcome to do that but knowing that these people will try to kick me off my land and lock it away like a nuclear waste dump in a time of housing crises means I’m going to deny access too.

As long as the artifacts sit undisturbed beneath the ground, that's also a form of preservation. What would be bad is simply digging the stuff up without a proper archeological excavation or at least a survey of the area - whether for fear of future restrictions being asserted, or otherwise.

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