The answer is partly about the pace at which archaeological knowledge accumulates, and partly about the development of the specific scientific techniques that produced the most significant findings.

The excavations at St Peter’s Church, Barton-upon-Humber, were conducted between 1978 and 1984, yielding a massive collection of skeletal material from the churchyard, hundreds of individuals spanning many centuries of burial.

Making sense of this material required years of analysis, publication, and interpretation.

The initial reports and publications addressed the full complexity of what had been found, situating Conquest Man within a much larger dataset of medieval burials.

Ancient DNA analysis as a scientific technique was not available in the 1980s.