The combination of funerary evidence and genetic evidence at Loch Borralie is a model for the kind of multi-strand analysis that the COMMIOS project is systematically applying to a wider range of Iron Age British sites.

The discovery also has value as a case study in how archaeological evidence is re-examined as new analytical methods become available.

The initial analysis of the Loch Borralie remains, conducted in 2000, produced conclusions that were reasonable given the evidence and methods then available.

The re-examination, conducted twenty-five years later with the full range of methods available to the COMMIOS team, produced a dramatically different and far more informative interpretation.

This pattern — of initial analysis followed by re-examination that transforms the interpretation — is likely to become more common as analytical methods continue to advance, and it is a reminder that collections of archaeological material in storage may hold information that cannot currently be accessed but that future analysis may reveal.