2021 reassessment was not a correction of a scientific error.

It was the application of thirty additional years of methodological development and theoretical understanding to a date that, in 1991, was the best available estimate from the best available methods.

Science is a process that improves its estimates over time.

Recognizing in 2021 that a 1991 date carries methodological concerns is not a failure of the 1991 science; it is the success of the 2021 science.

The Buhl burial’s contribution to the field’s understanding of the freshwater reservoir problem is, in a sense, the most durable of its contributions — because it is a case where the concern can be clearly articulated and communicated, where the connection between diet and dating methodology is directly documented by isotopic evidence, and where the implications for the Western Stemmed Tradition chronological debate can be spelled out precisely.