NAGPRA established the legal framework requiring federal agencies and federally funded institutions to inventory their holdings of Native American human remains and associated objects, consult with affiliated tribes, and repatriate those materials upon tribal request.

The Windover excavation occurred before NAGPRA, under a different legal and ethical framework.

Glen Doran and his team were operating under the standards of their time, standards that allowed the excavation and scientific study of ancient Indigenous burial sites in ways that the post-NAGPRA framework significantly constrains.

The recognition that a cemetery is a cemetery — not simply an archaeological resource but a place where people were deliberately and reverently interred — has evolved significantly since the 1980s.

The archaeological community has moved toward practices that involve more meaningful consultation with descendant communities before excavation begins, more careful consideration of what can be learned from non-destructive analysis before destructive sampling, and more attention to the interests of living communities in the treatment of ancient remains.