A group of extraordinary features, excavated at Mariënberg and interpreted as a small Late Mesolithic cemetery has been debated ever since their fi rst publication. It is the combination of pit shapes, profuse red staining by ochre (?) and exceptional 'grave gi s' such as sha polishers that has so far found no parallel anywhere in the Mesolithic record. This paper is intended to critically scrutinize all of the fi eld data and related arguments. It comes to new views on quite a number of aspects of the features, especially their precise age, their relation to longterm domestic activities at the site, the formation processes of the red staining and the issue of the pit shapes. A new view on their European context is given in reference to the overviews of Mesolithic burial customs by Judith Grünberg. The fi nal conclusion is that these features must indeed have been burial pits, particularly in the absence of any more convincing alternative explanation. The equally exceptional cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic in Bri any off er some distant parallels.