And what those conditions preserved — the bones, the woven fabric, the personal ornaments, the evidence of care given to the vulnerable, the tissue in some of the skulls — is the most complete picture of an Early Archaic Florida community that has ever been recovered.

That picture is not complete.

It never could be.

It is a window, not a mirror.

But it is more than any other site from this period and this place has provided, and it has changed — permanently and irreversibly — what archaeology thought it knew about the lives of the first Floridians.

A road was supposed to cross this patch of Florida ground.

Instead, a cemetery was found.