But the content of those beliefs — the specific cosmology, the specific spiritual framework within which these acts made sense — is not accessible from the physical evidence.

We do not know how many people attended the burial, how long the mortuary rituals lasted, what was said or sung or done in the preparation of the body and the deposition of the grave goods.

Mortuary rituals across all cultures involve elements that leave no physical trace — words, songs, gestures, the specific expressions of grief and hope and belief that define a community’s relationship to death.

The burial is the physical residue of a human event, not the event itself.