We can look to the past to see the future. Archaeology is more than just an indulgence of a rich society. We should not repeat the mistakes they made. There is an up side to the story archaeologists tell however.
Many societies have a record of success for hundreds, even thousands of years.
People such as the Lacandon Maya or the Hopi leave us lessons that we need to learn because they are marked by success rather than failure. Archaeological objects of any type have an exact find spot, a context in the three ordinary dimensions of space to produce the latitude, longitude, and depth measurements that define a point uniquely. This spatial component of context is just as important as the precise date of an artifact. Space is important to archaeologists because it enables them to determine the distances between different objects or features, or between entire settlements, or settlements and key vegetational zones and landmarks. Important distances can be a few inches of level ground between a dagger and the skeleton of its dead owner, or a mile separating two seasonal camps, or a complicated series of interrelated distance measurements separating dozens of villages that are part of an elaborate trading system carrying luxury goods like sea shells through several geographic regions hundreds of miles apart.