funerary practice

Brightly dressed dancers at a funeral ceremony, Indonesia. Funerals of wealthy Indonesians are extravagant in order to impress the gods and allow the deceased to enter paradise. As well as dancing, there is buffalo fighting, sacrifice, feasting, and celebration.

Ritual or act surrounding the disposal of a dead body, by burial, cremation, or other means (such as exposure). Solemn acts such as the preparation of the body, songs (laments), offering of gifts, the funeral procession, provision of a memorial, and mourning are subject to codes of procedure in most cultures. Crying and wailing at funerals are common throughout the world, yet do not necessarily reflect any affection for the deceased.

History There is evidence for ritualized burial as early as the Neanderthals, and further evidence from the upper Palaeolithic for the burial of skulls alone. By the 3rd millennium BC graves began to be used for successive burials, and the monumental pyramids in Egypt were constructed as tombs. The Egyptian Book of the Dead (c. 1600 BC) preserves magic formulas to be used in approaching the underworld; see Egypt, ancient: history, burials in the Archaic Period. Cremation was practised by Indo-European groups (Greeks and Teutons), but because of Christian concern for the resurrection it was suppressed in Europe until the modern era. In Egypt, as in some other cultures, bodies were preserved by a process of embalming. Pyramids, beehive tombs in Mycenaean Greece, Neolithic barrows and Bronze Age tumuli, mausoleums, caves, catacombs, and ship burials (for example, Sutton Hoo) testify to the variety of burial; decorated vases (from sub-Mycenaean Greece) and plain urns have been used to contain the ashes of the cremated dead. In India, bodies may be set afloat on the sacred River Ganges; some American Indian peoples practised ritual exposure. Elaborate gifts placed with the dead, of valued or useful objects, feature in many cultures, as does the decoration placed on sarcophagi, or the erection of memorial images; in ancient China, a terracotta army of 10,000 warriors guarded the tomb complex of the emperor Shi Huangdi.

Factors affecting type of funeral The method of disposal used must be seen in the light of beliefs with respect to a possible afterworld, the action of departed spirits, the constitution of the human soul, and the principles on which nature is based.

In European and American societies, ceremonies at a cenotaph, or tomb of the unknown soldier, commemorate the loss of unidentified combatants in the two world wars of the 20th century. If the deceased was an important member of the community, the rites are often elaborate. In some societies, funeral rites for children are virtually nonexistent.

Rite of passage Death is almost universally understood as a rite of passage from one world to another, which must be fully supported by the performance of accepted rituals and confirmed by a period of mourning for the bereaved. Funerary practices therefore have less to do with the deceased than with the living and have much in common with other rites of passage, such as birth, puberty, and marriage. Buddhists and Hindus, for instance, associate death with rebirth.

Symbolism Clothing and adornment usually symbolize the negation of normal lifestyle: in New Guinea mud and ashes are smeared on the body to contrast with the shiny oiled body that expresses good health, prosperity, and favour in the eyes of the ancestral spirits.