"is'nt the problem with America that they are only just beginning to wake up to the fact their country has a "past"..."

Not at all. Americans have been interested in their past for a long time. Thomas Jefferson excavated a Native American mound on his property and his techniques are considered to be a century ahead of their time. The Bone Wars rivalry of the second half of the nineteenth century between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh are legendary. As are the petrified man hoaxes, evincing at least the interest of Americans in their past, if not their knowledge about it.

Americans have been researching our past so diligently (albeit, much like other countries, just in front of the bulldozers) we are out of space to store all the stuff and records (much like agencies in other countries). That's a shame, of course.