The woman who was buried there with such unusual post-mortem treatment was part of a community that had genetic and presumably social connections to communities more than a hundred miles away, in some cases across open water.

The funerary practices evident at Loch Borralie, however unusual they may appear in isolation, were likely connected to broader traditions of treating the dead that were shared, modified, and transmitted across this maritime social network.

The implications for interpreting the burial are significant.

If the complex post-mortem processing of Individual 1 reflects a tradition that was maintained within these long-distance social networks, then the practice may have been more widespread than the single Loch Borralie example suggests.

The rarity of the evidence is a function of the rarity of good bone preservation in Iron Age Scotland, not necessarily a reflection of how rarely these practices occurred.