The specific findings — the demographic structure of the burial population, the evidence of diet and physical activity, the extraordinary lithopedion — are part of the permanent scientific record.

These sites contributed what they could contribute, under the specific conditions and constraints of their investigation.

The knowledge they generated has been preserved, even when the physical remains themselves have been returned to the ground.

That is the nature of the archaeological enterprise: to extract knowledge from physical evidence before that evidence disappears — through decay, through development, through the legitimate decisions of communities about the treatment of their ancestors.

The archaeologists who worked at Bering Sinkhole and Buckeye Knoll were racing against time and against competing claims, and they succeeded, partially, in extracting information that would otherwise have been lost entirely.