The Broader Meaning of a Single Burial

The Loch Borralie discovery is, at its most basic, the story of two people buried in a cairn two thousand years ago in the far north of Scotland.

The number of people directly involved — two individuals, the community that built their cairn and processed the woman’s remains — is small, and the geographic location is remote even by the standards of modern Scotland.

And yet the discovery carries significance that extends far beyond its physical scale.