Every deep in an old city cuts through the record of that city.
exists to read the ground before the concrete arrives.
The work is funded by the developer in most legal systems, which creates an obvious .
The party paying for the dig is the party delayed by whatever the dig finds.
Most archaeologists report that the system nonetheless works, because the rules are procedural.
A find must be recorded and the record must be published, whatever anybody would prefer.
What suffers is not the but the stage afterwards.
Analysis, conservation and publication are cheaper to than to complete.
Warehouses in several countries hold decades of unpublished material from commercial digs.
An that is never written up has destroyed a site and preserved nothing.
Funding the report as a condition of the building fixes this, and few authorities do it.
Cities that the findings into the finished building gained something unexpected.
A glass floor over a Roman street or a preserved wall in a car park is visited by people who would never enter a museum.
The cost of such features is small once it is designed in and enormous once it is added later.
That sequence, rather than the archaeology, is what decides whether a city keeps its own evidence.