Same with Greece. When constructing the Athens metro, they kept finding artifacts. Some of those were used in the stations, in mini-museums along the walls of the corridors.

Seems similar in the UK. Development pauses for a week of archaeologists, then the skyscraper gets built anyway.

In my home town for one such project they came up with a really cool alternative. The basement of the building is encased in glass and you can go see the ruins. Little museum and everything.

And the building, or underground parking lot I think, still got built.

That’s what Apple had to do with its main Puerta del Sol store in Madrid: https://www.theverge.com/2013/7/10/4512318/apple-store-spain...

That's what happened with the new Bloomberg HQ in London. It's a nice museum underground.

It's been pretty amazing walking past that site everyday seeing the pictures of the artefacts on the hoardings. Now it's all done, I keep meaning to visit the museum.

For people who have NO idea what was under the new Bloomberg HQ in London, here's a link:

https://www.londonmithraeum.com/

When I visited Bologna, I found that their main library is that way -- they have a glass floor over the excavations below.

That's a great idea.

I know of one construction where they found 11th century ruins/remants, but 'forgot' to tell the archeologists to avoid delay of a few years, they just covered everything in concrete and finished the construction.

What a damn shame.

What's the alternative--people stop developing Istanbul, Rome, etc entirely? I can't say I'm entirely unsympathetic to a population that wants development over marginally better understanding of places that already experience high levels of excavation and historical tourism.

I agree. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's valuable. Archaeologists come in and determine if the area has any historical value or advances our understanding of the ancient past. If it does, construction stops while the finds are uncovered. If not, then continue on.

Finding yet another clay pot in Rome, one of the largest centers of population with one of the longest and most complete historical records of anywhere in the ancient world, is probably not going to be of much historical value.

In an age where you can buy 10 Roman coins on Amazon for $25 and have them delivered to your house in two days with Prime shipping, the value of common ancient Roman artifacts is made abundantly clear.

It's valuable (think about revenues from tourism) but we still have to live our lives. The ancients built on top of anything was there before. That's why we have so many archeological layers in Rome.

It's not valuable if all they find is standard roman clay pot # 123,312 to 124,312.

There was an article about this when they were building the tunnel in Istanbul. They did find some significant stuff, but the vast majority of it was stuff they already had tons of. They literally filled warehouses with the stuff, and dumped most of it back in because it was not rare or significant.

IIRC there's literally a hill in Rome that is just ancient olive oil amphorae (clay jars) shards.

Monte dei Cocci aka Testaccio - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testaccio

Clubbing and nightlife area now, nice place...

You still have to excavate it just in case you do find something unique or historically significant.

10 fake Roman coins worth probably $1 of metal. Never buy ancient coins online from random dealers, or locals selling coins supposedly found in the area. Italy and Isreal are some of the worst places to buy ancient coins as an uneducated tourist.

You can develop on the property, but you should also have to pay for archaeologists to excavate the site and identify artifacts of historical value. History is too full of examples of foolish cultures of the past destroying historical artifacts because they don't like them, think they are inconvenient, think they aren't significant, or want to use them as building materials. There have been plenty of cultures who basically thought "What's the point in preserving this stuff if we know the history of this stuff?" The interest of the world to retain and understand historical evidence is more important that the interest of relatively few people to make marginally more money.

>What's the alternative--people stop developing Istanbul, Rome, etc entirely?

An alternative to squeezing a few billion more people onto our already massively overpopulated planet? Madness! (and certainly unpopular among the HN crowd)

OTOH digging for construction does give the opportunity to at least find and discover these buried things. Without that they’d never be uncovered. Nobody would ever know they were down there. So it’s always seemed a win-win to me when managed right.