BONES have long been a major object of concern in burial, sacrificial, and divination practices throughout the world. Indeed, this role has been so significant that a number of theories have been developed to explain their prominence. In the earlier part of the twentieth century, many of these theories were based upon evolutionary claims: several scholars hypothesized that the rituals involving bones emerged from earlier hunting cultures, and that the continuing prevalence of bones in the rituals of agricultural societies represented a survival of these earlier beliefs.

Particular emphasis in many of the theories about bones was based on ethnographic evidence from northern Eurasia and northern America, where several hunting societies believed that after they killed an animal, its bones should be treated with ritual care (for instance, buried, hung in trees, thrown into the sea). If done properly, the animal would then be reborn from the bones...