[extragood]

> In the past, many archaeologists interpreted these batons as a noisemaker or ritual object, a sort of ice age magic wand or scepter. “Ritualism was something they used to ascribe everything to,” says Wei Chu, an archaeologist at Leiden University.

This is encouraging. Surely many of the artifacts we've found had some functional purpose. Ritualism as a default seems like a cop out in many cases. If we don't know, "we don't know" suffices