The recording of its position — its depth within the cave sediment, the specific layer from which it came, the other materials associated with it in that layer — was part of the standard documentation of the excavation.

This contextual information, preserved in the original excavation records, was what would later allow researchers to situate the tooth within the archaeological sequence and to assess its significance relative to other materials from the site.

The paper trail created by the 1949 excavation — the field notes, the catalog records, the publication of results in the archaeological literature — was the essential foundation for the later scientific work.

Without that documentation, the tooth would have been an isolated specimen without provenance, scientifically decontextualized and of limited value.