The ethnographic knowledge that Makah community members and tribal elders brought to the excavation was not simply background context.

It was interpretive resource.

When a complex wooden object was recovered and its function was not immediately obvious from its form alone, oral knowledge about traditional technology could sometimes provide the identification.

The name that a category of object had in the Makah language, and the associated knowledge about its use, was information that no amount of purely archaeological analysis could generate.

The decision to excavate also required an understanding of the technical challenges involved.