DEATH IN LIFE

What could be more universal than death? Yet what an incredible variety of responses it evokes. Corpses are burned or buried, with or without animal or human sacrifice; they are preserved by smoking, embalming, or pickling; they are eaten – raw, cooked, or rotten; they are ritually exposed as carrion or simply abandoned; or they are dismembered and treated in a variety of these ways. Funerals are the occasion for avoiding people or holding parties, for fighting or having sexual orgies, for weeping or laughing, in a thousand different combinations. The diversity of cultural reaction is a measure of the universal impact of death.

It is not a random reaction, however; always it is meaningful and expressive. This study is about the rituals by which people confront death, and in so doing, celebrate life. Anthropologists have, of course, no special understanding of the mystery of death. We can at best only recount the wisdoms of other cultures, wisdoms that have found expression in song and dance, as well as solemn rite, for funerals elsewhere are often rowdy affairs in comparison with those of mainstream America. This is true in the islands that provide our most extended case material, Borneo and Madagascar, as it is in much of Southeast Asia and Africa. Closer to home, one thinks of Irish wakes or the jazz bands that traditionally accompany funeral processions in New Orleans.