Every elaborately furnished burial raises the same unanswerable question: what did the people who prepared it believe would happen to the person they were burying?

The objects placed in the MA-1 burial — the beads, the tiara, the bird carving, the pendants and plaques — were not placed randomly.

They were chosen, arranged, and positioned by people who had specific intentions, specific beliefs, and specific understandings of what these objects meant and what purpose they would serve.

Were they believed to be useful to the child in a realm beyond death?

Were they markers of the child’s social identity that needed to accompany him because they were part of who he was?