The Native Village Buried By A Mudslide For 500 Years — And The 55,000 Artifacts Found Preserved Beneath The Mud

The organization of six specific longhouses at a specific moment in the mid-to-late fifteenth or early sixteenth century can be described in detail.

The material inventory of those households can be examined in its actual form rather than inferred from later analogies.

The artistic tradition of the community can be traced to a point 500 years before European contact with direct physical evidence.

The technology of whaling, fishing, and food preparation can be documented through the actual tools rather than through their post-contact analogues.

This depth of specific knowledge is the gift that the mud gave to the future, wrapped in a catastrophe that the community of the time experienced as a disaster.