A very tight-in shot of the model shows the onetime soilpipe inlet to the septic tank at the tank’s S end. The installers (fifty–odd years ago) had unknowingly cut into the Circle here: the cleanly excavated rectangular pit or “jacket” they dug to retain the tank was easily visible. The S end of the tank had just cut into the basin arc at this juncture. Nearby “solution pits” and basins (with rock cobbles) are clearly visible. For scale, the width of the tank base here is only a little over two inches…

    Though clearly an intrusive feature into the basins ring itself (some contents from individual basins have been dated to c. 2000 ybp (years before present), a prominent state anthropologist (J. Milanich) refused to accept this. The charitable view is that he was only urging scientific caution, but dogged disputations in the popular press, “taking sides” and so on, coupled with vacuous interpretations (also covered in the press) of the Site as “Mayan,” a “New World Stonehenge,” and so on, did much to confuse laymen (and local taxpayers!). Soon (unrelated) delegations of  “Native Persons” and social and religious activists joined forces in daily street demonstrations at the Site. Local politicians took opposing sides in the “issues.”  Major sources of financial aid were sought to buy the site (it eventually was – with taxpayer dollars!). A Court order finally stopped all activity and the “first phase” excavations here, and ordered all from the site… Its disposition remains yet in limbo.