The hearth in which she was placed had been the center of warmth and cooking and community life.

Its repurposing as a burial space for the infant speaks to an understanding of the relationship between life and death — or between this world and the next — that connected the two in the specific geography of the hearth.

What was thought, what was said, what was done, in the hours or days after her death — we cannot know.

The record does not preserve words or gestures or grief.

It preserves only the bones, carefully placed, and the ochre or other materials that accompanied her burial if any were used, and the stratigraphic evidence that tells us she was placed deliberately rather than randomly deposited.