The radiocarbon method itself has continued to improve.

Modern pretreatment protocols, ultrafiltration methods, and Bayesian statistical frameworks for combining multiple dates have substantially increased the reliability and precision of ancient bone dating.

The date on the Buhl burial, run in 1991, represents the state of the art of that era.

A date run today on the same material — if the material were still available — would be more reliable, though it would not necessarily produce a different result if the freshwater reservoir effect was significant.

The irreversibility of the reburial is the point at which scientific limitation and ethical obligation intersect most directly.