The combination of field archaeology, radiocarbon dating expertise, ancient DNA analysis, and organic chemistry requires collaboration across disciplinary boundaries and across institutional affiliations.

This kind of interdisciplinary collaboration is increasingly characteristic of cutting-edge archaeological research, and it is one of the factors that distinguishes the Paisley research from earlier work at the site.

The methodological tools available to Cressman in the 1930s, or even to the researchers who worked at the site in the following decades, were fundamentally different from what Jenkins and his collaborators have been able to bring to bear.

The availability of AMS radiocarbon dating, ancient DNA analysis, and mass spectrometry for lipid biomarker identification has transformed what can be learned from materials like the Paisley coprolites.