"The stone tools may have come from the graves, but it is possible that they were buried at a household and the tools were part of the living area, not the grave. It is fairly common around the world for people to be buried in or near their houses. Seems strange to us, but we live in cities and towns and the situation is different."

"My point is that burials can and are found throughout residential sites – housing. They are at different depths and are cut into layers where people were walking and living in centuries gone by. So a stone tool lost in the soil might find itself within the grave fill, or perhaps just beside the body as it was placed in the grave."

• Colin Pardoe, Physical Anthropologist