Inhumation—more commonly referred to as burial—is one of the most common mortuary ritual treatments, viewed across the diversity of human cultures and throughout recent prehistoric and historical periods. Mortuary treatments are the techniques by which members of human societies ritually handle the bodily remains of the dead, as the living stage a meaningful transition to cope with the social and emotional impacts of death and loss (Nilsson Stutz 2003). Primary burial—that is, inhumation of the whole cadaver—can leave particularly recognizable taphonomic signatures, and thus, it may be reliably distinguished from unintentional disturbance and mixing (Duday 2009; Nilsson Stutz 2003). As such, Pleistocene‐age burial features provide evidence of the evolution of human ritualized behaviors. A comparative evolutionary perspective on human ritual can also clarify unique derived features of sociality, complex cognition, symbolism, language, and extended life history strategies in the hominins.