Valued objects were often buried for safety, to be retrieved later, but many were deposited with other intentions connected with ritual practices. These varied according to local customs and beliefs, and can only be understood in a broader social context. Some objects would have been placed with the purpose of resolving issues among the living – disputes, social ranking and making bonds. Others were offerings intended to pacify ancestors, spirits and gods. Sometimes special places such as rivers or the ditches of ceremonial monuments were chosen but often objects were buried in simple pits with no surviving marker.

The objects, which are often finely crafted, and their places of burial played a vital role in the way people reached out to their spiritual world. This was true for practical objects such as axes as well as for objects invested with different powers. Acts of burial were probably accompanied by ceremonies, during which artefacts could be used both as part of the ritual and as objects of ‘payment’ to secure favours. In either case, their symbolic role was closely bound to the success of the rites.