A cemetery with balanced sex ratios suggests that the mortuary practices of this community were not limited to warriors or leaders or other specific demographic categories, but extended to the full community.

This was not a disaster site.

It was not a mass grave produced by a single catastrophic event.

It was a community’s cemetery, used over an extended period — possibly generations — for the burial of its members as they died naturally.

The question of what kind of community would use a pond as its cemetery, and why, would take years of analysis to begin to answer.

Excavating Below Water