NYTimes has an interesting article about an ancient graveyard uncovered in Ur.

I thought one part of the article was strange.

Ritual killing associated with a royal death was practiced by other ancient cultures, archaeologists say, and raises a question: Why would anyone, knowing their probable fate, choose a life as a court attendant?

“It’s almost like mass murder and hard for us to understand,” Dr. Monge said. “But in the culture these were positions of great honor, and you lived well in the court, so it was a trade-off. Besides, the movement into the next world was not for them necessarily something to fear.”

Why is the archaeologists assuming they had much of a choice?