Planning a room addition or new building on the family homestead? Better make sure you know where Grandpa had the outhouse.
I received a letter from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources today, informing me of a new law that went on the books this last July.
There has for years been a mostly ignored law that if you were excavating and uncovered an arrowhead, the jobsite was to be shut down, the DNR was to be notified, and all of the workers were required to stand around and pick their collective noses while the DNR sifted around for another arrowhead. There's a good reason that particular law was mostly ignored.
Not content with just saving arrowheads, our legislators have now decided to include "nonportable evidence of past human behavior or activity, found on or in the ground, including structural remains, and formed before December 31, 1870."
Now, I'm sure this new law will be as widely ignored as the previous version. I don't know of to many builders that would shut down a job everytime they uncover an old corncrib, or something that slipped out of Grandpa's bib overalls while he was taking his morning constitutional.
This new law will, however, have a definite effect in doing what the government loves to do.
It will insure that we don't run out of criminals.
I guess that's something.
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 I guess Rex, we should be
I guess Rex, we should be happy we don't live in Europe...where you can hardly dig anywhere and not hit some thing from the past.
I do share your apparent disdain for such nonsense...as if we can afford to dig up and make a historical site of the outhouse or something such as that. Then there are all the shoe boxes of family pets that someone will want to sponsor a bill to protect. There has to be common sense boundaries set.
Randall L. Jacobsen Sr.
Proprietor
Sow N Sews Custom Sewing N Repairs
and Army Navy Surplus Of Muncie
and Chaplain, M.O.R.E. Ministries, American Legion Post19