The hunter-gatherer groups of the Last Glacial Maximum may not have buried their dead in ways that would preserve skeletal material over tens of thousands of years.

Many possible funerary practices — exposure of the dead to the elements, disposal in water, cremation, or simple surface deposition — would leave little or no archaeologically recoverable evidence.

Only burial in specific conditions — rapid interment in sediment, in contexts with good preservation — is likely to produce skeletal material that survives to the present.

Second, population density.

The groups living in eastern Beringia during the Last Glacial Maximum were almost certainly small — the productive but challenging mammoth steppe environment could support hunter-gatherers, but not at the densities that agricultural economies support.

A small population of mobile hunter-gatherers, leaving occasional traces at sites like Bluefish Caves, would produce very few deaths in any one location — and the probability that any of those deaths resulted in burial in conditions favorable for preservation is low.