That meaning is not recoverable in its specific content from the archaeological evidence, but its existence — the fact that meaning was being expressed — is evident in the deliberate, careful, substantial way the ochre was applied.

The Clovis people who buried the Anzick child were doing something fully recognizable as human — expressing grief, honoring the dead, enacting beliefs about what comes after death, and maintaining the social bonds that connect a community even in the face of loss.

They were doing it with the specific materials of their specific time and place and culture, but the underlying human impulse is continuous with every burial human beings have ever conducted, from the caves of Africa 100,000 years ago to the cemeteries of today.

Resolution: A Child at the Center of Everything