Use of Red Ochre in Burial: Reason to Ritual? (2022)

The iron-oxide pigment known as ochre has been found in burials going back tens of thousands of years. Most experimental work previously conducted on the hematite-based pigment’s historical usages has focused on its application in animal hide and food preservation, mosquito repellents, and as a sunscreen. This research suggests that ochre may well have been used both within religious ritual and, concurrently, in more strictly ‘functional’ applications. In this study, ritual contexts from burials as well as manufacturing processes from Europe’s Upper Paleolithic period were employed as the baseline for the methodologies used in the application and processing of the pigment. To simulate a decompositional environment and test its bug-repelling qualities, tanks of dermestid beetles were filled with pork spareribs covered with the ochre to observe their reaction. As hypothesized, the beetles interacted mainly with spareribs sans or partially covered with pigment.