The relationship between the living and the dead in most traditional societies is not a simple one-way relationship of the living honoring the dead.

It is a reciprocal relationship in which the dead continue to have a role in the community of the living — as ancestors who can be appealed to, as guardians of the territory, as sources of legitimacy for the living group’s claim to the landscape.

A cemetery is not just a repository.

It is a social institution that maintains the connection between the present community and its past.

By using Bering Sinkhole as a cemetery for 5,500 years, the communities of the central Edwards Plateau were building and maintaining an ancestral connection to the specific landscape around the sinkhole.