It could not directly document what the culture had looked like 500 years earlier.

Ozette provided that direct documentation.

It established that the core elements of what the ethnographic record described as Northwest Coast culture were already present, in substantially the same forms, in the period before sustained European contact.

The bentwood boxes, the halibut hooks, the whaling technology, the formline artistic tradition, the household organization: all of these were present in the Ozette assemblage in forms that were recognizable from the ethnographic record while also showing the specific variations and characteristics of the pre-contact period.

This kind of temporal depth is invaluable for understanding cultural history.