The specific requirements of excavating a pond cemetery — managing water levels, maintaining the integrity of fragile buried material, recovering and preserving organic artifacts in a state that allows both conservation and scientific analysis — are challenges that every subsequent Florida wet-site excavation has had to address, and the Windover experience provided a template.

The Half Left Behind — And What It Represents

The decision to excavate only approximately half of Windover Pond was not merely scientific prudence.

It was also an implicit ethical statement: that the place had a claim on being left, partially, as it was.

Excavation is inherently destructive.

No matter how careful the technique, the act of exposing buried material removes it from the context that preserved it and subjects it to the conditions that normally destroy it.

The waterlogged peat that preserved the Windover material for 8,000 years ceases to be a preservation environment the moment it is opened to air.