Thos. Jefferson got it all wrong, you know:
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thos. Jefferson, 1789."
Well, 'tis fact (among others), that Old Thomas in 1784, conducted the Nation's very first "dig" (a Mound right on his own property) - but he ought to be around now to see the latter-day yahoos of his "informed electorate" who show up whenever and wherever there is a "dig" anywhere across our land currently! The forces of irration and anti-science were never stronger, and growing moreso every day. Nowhere are they better recorded than in the improbable circus attendant a modern "dig." The Miami Circle was most exemplary of this genre...which see below:
BREAKING NEWS! ... Serendipity!... Perhaps... (However, my own vibes rather suggest, with Yogi Berra, a likely case of "deja-vu all over again"...) For today (01-15-06), the press (including international papers once more: Pravda, Manchester Guardian, the works!) announces new find of "...hundreds of stone-boxed human remains in crevices across the river from the old Miami Circle Site." Will we now see a rekindled interest in 8/DA/12 ...?
Who knows? Perhaps, the new finds, too, will be 'botched' both in the field and in the reporting, as the very same Director is in charge again.
Perhaps not. (Who knows?) Stone-box ossuaries are nothing new in Southeastern States Archaeology generally - though the find is already being hyped as "a-fantastic-never-before-known-gee-whiz" sort of thing as it applies to South Florida specifically (which is true for now) but recall as I said (quoted) elsewhere: "Lack of evidence is not always evidence of a lack"... And Florida - all of it - lies within the Province of the Southeastern States. What would be "news" would be establishment of every hint of Mississippian Period influence hereabouts as "really" that of (putative) peripatetic Mayans! Yes, Indeedy! But once again I hear the whisper of "The Maya Are Coming! The Maya Are Coming!" blowing 'cross the balmy waters of adjoining Biscayne Bay. For now, however, I shall remain content to let (as they used to say down in New Or-leeans when there still was a New Or-leeans): 'Le bon temps roule!' (But events there proved them all wet in the end, too...(Grin!)