That’s exactly why I keep a ledger for every mound I study—pollen, soil, the chosen grave goods all line up like a meticulous itinerary. In the Neolithic, for instance, the ochre banding you see on the mound walls wasn’t just decoration; it’s a marker that the community believed in the earth’s cycle—so the soil composition tells us as much about their rituals as the climate data does. And don’t forget to tag each sample with the precise burial rite; the dates can shift by a few decades depending on the local calendrical system, which is crucial for accurate indexing. It’s a bureaucratic puzzle, but one that’s incredibly rewarding once the layers of time are sorted.