I have continued to try and track down the issue and it turns out the problem is with
JBoss Embedded.
I've ruled out Maven being the problem by providing a command line that shows how
JBoss Embedded fails to load the persistence.xml file when multiple _directories_ are
given on the classpath.
(this may not actually be a bug in Embedded JBoss but how it interprets the EJB3 spec)
For those interested the current frontline of effort is here:
http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=125266
(my post starts halfway down the first page of the thread)
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