Or was it performed by family members?

Or by a combination of people with different roles in the process?

In many cultures with complex funerary practices, the handling of the dead is the responsibility of specific individuals or groups who have specialized knowledge of the appropriate procedures.

The existence of such specialists — sometimes identified in the anthropological literature as mortuary practitioners, bone specialists, or, in the context of ancestor veneration practices, as those responsible for maintaining the relationship between the living and the dead — would be consistent with the degree of skill and specificity visible in the Loch Borralie evidence.

The working of bone into tools, for example, requires knowledge of bone material properties — how cortical and cancellous bone behave under different kinds of force, where specific kinds of modification will produce specific kinds of result.