The Loch Borralie paper is one contribution to this larger project, and its findings gain additional meaning from being situated within a network of comparable findings from other Iron Age sites that the project is producing.

Similar Discoveries Elsewhere in Britain and Europe

The Loch Borralie findings, while unusual and without direct parallel, can be placed in a broader context of evidence for complex post-mortem treatment of the dead in Iron Age Britain and in earlier and contemporary periods across Europe.

Evidence for the deliberate modification of human skulls is found at a range of prehistoric European sites.

At the Herxheim site in Germany, associated with the Linear Pottery Culture of the Neolithic period, human remains showing evidence of systematic processing — including skull working consistent with brain removal and the use of bone as raw material — have been documented and debated.