Medication for things like depression and anxiety, and other comorbid conditions often work on multiples if correctly prescribed, and may cause a psuedointegration or a distancing from the front or other system members, but medication rarely does anything to fully integrate a system or control switching.

For example, consider an archaeological find of a burial that contains coins dating to 1588, 1595, and others less securely dated to 1590–1625.

Many systems don’t remember being anything else, and might have no clue if they ever were anything else, or might believe they were born multiple.

The only clinical explanation for multiplicity comes for DID, which is caused by severe trauma in early childhood, but many other explanations have been offered by the community at large.

An archaeological example of a terminus ante quem would be deposits formed before a historically dateable event, such as building foundations that were partly demolished to make way for the construction of a city wall.

If it is known that the wall was finished in 650, then the foundations must have been demolished in 650 or earlier; all that can be said from the evidence is that it happened before the known event.