In the Neolithic period of Europe, human bone as a tool-making material appears at multiple sites, often in contexts associated with complex mortuary practices involving the long-term curation and manipulation of human remains.

The Neolithic communities that built the great chambered tombs of Atlantic Europe — the megalithic tombs of Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, and other regions — appear in many cases to have engaged in practices of bone circulation and manipulation that extended over long periods after an individual’s initial death.

The Iron Age evidence for human bone tool production, including the Loch Borralie case, fits within this long tradition while also being specific to its own time and context.

The Iron Age communities of Britain were not continuing Neolithic practices without modification; they were part of their own specific cultural world, with their own specific relationships to the dead and their own specific ways of working with human remains.