Archaeologists Baffled By A 2,000-Year-Old Skeleton Found In Scotland With Its Brain Scooped Out And Its Bones Turned Into Tools

What those purposes were is not something the bones themselves can tell us.

Possible Interpretations: What the Scholars Say

The researchers who published the Loch Borralie analysis are appropriately cautious about the interpretation of the complex sequence of evidence they uncovered.

The paper acknowledges directly that “the motivation behind the extensive manipulation of the skeletal remains of Individual 1 is very difficult to interpret,” and the specific explanations that are offered are characterized as possibilities rather than conclusions.

The interpretation that the researchers seem most inclined toward — without stating it as a certainty — is that Individual 1 was someone of significance within her community, and that the complex post-mortem treatment of her remains reflects a form of ancestor veneration or at least a set of practices aimed at maintaining a continued relationship between the living community and this specific dead person.