The initial disturbance mixed and scattered some of the material.

Human remains and artifacts were recovered by the workers and the property owners and held privately for years before the scientific community became fully engaged with what the site represented.

This is a common pattern in the history of archaeological discovery — significant sites are often encountered accidentally, by people who are not trained to extract and preserve the full range of evidence such sites can contain.

Despite the circumstances of discovery, the material that was recovered and eventually made available to researchers was extraordinary enough to transform what scientists understood about Clovis burial practices and, eventually, about the genetic history of the earliest Americans.