The methodological tools that allowed this re-attribution include the development of more extensive comparative reference collections for bone modification marks, the application of microscopic imaging at higher resolution than was available in 2000, and the access to a wider range of comparative cases from other archaeological sites that allowed the Loch Borralie marks to be situated within a pattern of human bone modification rather than assessed in isolation.

Taphonomic analysis is, in this sense, an archaeological form of detective work: it uses physical evidence to reconstruct what happened to the remains after death, with the goal of distinguishing the intentional from the accidental and the human from the non-human.

The Loch Borralie case is an unusually dramatic example of how a taphonomic re-assessment can transform the interpretation of a burial.

Iron Age Religion and the Invisible World