Human bones appear in a range of non-burial contexts: in settlement debris, in boundary deposits, in ritual pits, and in association with other categories of special material.

The dead, in Iron Age Britain, seem to have been present in the world of the living in ways that went beyond the simple act of burial and the closing of the grave.

This context is essential for understanding why the Loch Borralie discovery matters as much as it does.

The preservation of identifiable human remains from Iron Age Scotland is itself rare enough to be scientifically valuable.

The preservation of remains that show clear evidence of deliberate post-mortem modification — of a specific, documented sequence of actions performed on a body after death — is extraordinarily rare, because for that evidence to survive, you need not only good bone preservation but a sequence of events that left archaeologically legible marks on the preserved bones.