Sky exposure — leaving the dead in exposed locations to be processed by scavengers and the elements — produces scattered, disarticulated bone that is difficult to identify as intentional.

Burial in rivers or bogs leaves traces that are preserved only in very specific circumstances.

Cremation without the collection of remains leaves little or nothing to find.

And the circulation of human remains — keeping and moving bones through the living community rather than placing them in permanent burial locations — would leave traces only if the bones were eventually deposited somewhere, and only if those deposits could be identified as intentional.

The evidence from sites across Iron Age Britain suggests that the treatment of the dead in this period was genuinely diverse and genuinely complex.