Archaeological experiments — researchers actually making beads using replica Upper Paleolithic tools — suggest that drilling a single bead in bone or ivory requires somewhere between 45 minutes and several hours, depending on the hardness of the material, the quality of the borer, and the skill of the person performing the work.

Let us use a conservative estimate of one hour per bead for the more demanding materials.

One hundred and twenty beads, at one hour each, represents 120 hours of bead-making work.

That is three full working weeks for a single person, or the labor of three people for a full week, or six people for three days.

This is the minimum labor investment in the beads alone — not counting the diadem, the pendants, the carved bird figures, or any other component of the burial assemblage.

In a community living at the edge of subsistence in the Last Glacial Maximum — a community where every adult’s time and energy was needed for the basic work of survival — dedicating this much labor to the production of burial objects for a child represents an enormous commitment.