Anthropology of Death: Rituals, Beliefs, and Cultural Perspectives

Cultural relativism

Looking at cultures from their own perspective, not projecting our categories onto them.

Cultural context

Understanding beliefs, practices, and values from the viewpoint of someone inside that culture.

Deathways

The social and cultural processes and practices that surround death and funerals.

Robert Hertz's argument about death

Death is a process, not a single event, involving an intermediary period and secondary burials.

Primary vs. secondary burials

Primary burials: skeleton in anatomical position; Secondary (bundle) burials: bones rearranged.

Social functions of deathways

(1) Disaggregation—removing the dead from society, and (2) Re-establishment of social order.

Corpse danger to the Berawan

It represents a tear in society, contaminates the living, and risks producing ghosts or zombies.

Van Gennep's three stages of rites of passage

Separation → Liminal Period → Incorporation.

Liminal period

A transitional, in-between phase with ambiguous/dangerous behavior outside normal social rules.

Van Gennep's 6 characteristics of liminality

Transitional, in-between, ambiguous, paradoxical, dangerous, and spiritually instructive.

Hertz's 8 observations about death

Death is a process; body condition mirrors spirit; corpse fate models soul's fate; spirit is dangerous; death tears society; ceremonies scale with loss; funerals resemble other rites; bones reunite society.

Ossuaries

Collective burial places (often secondary), like family crypts or sandung.

Victor Turner's three models of death

Death as a journey, as sex, and as rebirth.

Archaeologists study graves

They provide deliberate deposits linking ritual, belief systems, personhood, and past social organization.

Factors improving preservation of human remains

Dry deserts, caves, waterlogged anaerobic sites, and very cold environments (e.g. bogs, ice).

NAGPRA (1990)

U.S. law giving Native American tribes authority over ancestral remains, prohibiting sale, and requiring repatriation.

African Burial Ground project's significance

It recovered African American lives and histories, reshaped archaeology into a community-focused and restorative practice.

Mesopotamian "death pits of Ur"

Royal tombs with grave goods, human sacrifices, and elaborate funerary feasts, reflecting death as a journey.

Common grave goods in Ur

Jewelry, adornment, and clothing—symbols of power and identity, not everyday tools or art.

Key ideas about death from anthropology

Death is a process, not an event; physical death ≠ social death; degrees of death exist; funerals repair society; good vs. bad deaths matter.