The debate on ancestor worship was initiated in anthropology back in the nineteenth century in order to address the history of religion preceding Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism. In present day anthropology, a consensus has emerged to reject the expression ‘worship’, as it presumes an evolutionary view of religions (cf. Bloch 2008 [1986], 320). Couderc and Sillander have suggested replacing it with the expression ‘ancestorship’ (2012, 6). Their proposal provides a good introduction to the Timorese case. Their suggestion is that the semantic core of the term ancestorship consists of ‘the relationship of the living with the ancestors, and the latter encompass both presently existing spirit agencies (ancestor spirits) and formerly existing people of the past’ (Couderc and Sillander, 2012, 6). In this light, the comparison between sociocultural contexts in which ancestorship is central and others where it structures social life to a lesser extent is a primary consideration.

Taking as his starting point a historical and contemporary comparative panorama, Maurice Bloch (2002) highlights a particular contrast between, on the one hand, certain African and Asian (including Southeast Asian) contexts where ancestorship takes a central place, and on the other hand the Amerindians of Lowland South America, where this issue is residual. In the latter contexts, we frequently find that, instead of complex forms destined to create or maintain the presence of dead kinsfolk in the lives of their descendants, oblivion and the transformation of dead relatives into alternative categories of relatedness are produced (Bloch 2002, 66).