Ozette reveals what that impoverishment costs in terms of understanding.

The implication extends beyond the Northwest Coast.

Wherever organic preservation has not occurred in archaeological sites, the record similarly misrepresents the actual material culture of the people who lived there.

The organic world of pre-contact societies everywhere was richer, more complex, and more central to daily life than the durable residues that survive in most sites can suggest.

Ozette is the most complete demonstration of this principle in Northwest Coast archaeology, and one of the most complete demonstrations of it in North American archaeology as a whole.

The knowledge produced by the Ozette excavation is, in this sense, knowledge not just about Makah life but about the potential richness of pre-contact material culture that standard archaeological sites cannot reveal.