Once the context has been disturbed, much of this information is irretrievably lost.

At Anzick, the disturbance meant that the original spatial relationships between the Clovis points, the bifaces, the bone tools, the ochre, and the human remains could not be fully reconstructed.

The association between all of these elements — the fact that they were found together — was established by multiple lines of evidence and is not seriously in doubt.

But the specific spatial arrangement that would have allowed the most detailed interpretation of the burial’s structure and the precise ritual practices involved was not available.

This limitation has meant that the Anzick burial, for all its importance, has been interpreted from a position of incomplete contextual information.