If he is right, then the knowledge generated by Windover is not just scientifically valuable.

It is also historically specific — the product of a moment in the relationship between American archaeology and Indigenous sovereignty that has passed.

Future excavations of comparable sites, if they occur at all, will occur in a different legal and ethical framework and will produce knowledge through a different process of consultation and consent.

Whether that process will yield comparable depth of knowledge is an open question.

It might yield less, if the requirements of consultation and the preferences of affiliated communities limit the scope of analysis.