It identified the location as a place of particular historical and cultural significance.

The excavation confirmed that a mudslide had indeed buried structures at the site.

The radiocarbon dating established that this event occurred approximately 500 years before the excavation, give or take about 50 years.

This date range places the slide in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century, in the period before significant European presence on the Northwest Coast.

The oral history had preserved the memory of an event from that period accurately enough to direct archaeologists to the right location with the right expectations about what they would find.

This is not a case of oral history providing a vague approximation that archaeology then sharpened.