The assessment was reasonable given the limited evidence visible at the surface.

What Schmidt saw, with eyes trained by years of experience with Pre-Pottery Neolithic material, was the lithic evidence on the surface — the specific types of flint tools and the debitage from their production that bore the unmistakable signature of PPN stoneworking technology.

The specific forms of PPN projectile points and the characteristic burin tools of that period are recognizable to a specialist in ways that are not obvious to non-specialists.

Schmidt recognized what he was looking at, understood its implications, and initiated the process that would eventually reveal what lay beneath the mound.