To Thomsen the find circumstances were the key to dating. As early as 1821, he wrote in a letter to fellow antiquarian Schröder that, ”is more important than to point out that hitherto we have not paid enough attention to what was found together,” and, the next year, that ”[we still do not know enough about most of the antiquities either … only future archaeologists may be able to decide, but they will never be able to do so if they do not observe what things are found together and our collections are not brought to a greater degree of perfection.”