Not just to specialists in western prehistory, but to the entire project of understanding how and when the Americas were populated, what technologies the first Americans carried, and whether there was one founding event or several.

What A Single Date Can And Cannot Carry

Here is where the scientific story becomes more complicated and more interesting.

The Buhl burial had one radiocarbon date.

A single date, from a single sample, from a single element of a skeleton that had been partially disrupted by quarry operations before archaeologists even arrived at the site.

In radiocarbon dating, a single date is better than no date.

But it is substantially less reliable than multiple dates from multiple samples that produce consistent results.