Mortuary Practices

Rituals surrounding the treatment and disposal of fellow humans are recurrent features of human culture. Many practices are time-consuming, expensive, elaborate, and even dangerous. Why then do people perform mortuary rituals? Anthropological and sociological researchers have long asserted that mortuary rituals confer tangible benefits to the social group. Importantly, these benefits exceed their costs, which helps to explain why people engage in such practices. Recent research from a variety of evolutionary and cognitive sciences provides fresh insight into the functions of mortuary practices. This chapter draws upon systematic cross-cultural comparisons to demonstrate that mortuary practices share core features that are not amenable to parochial explanations. Mortuary rituals are highly regulated, functionally opaque, and elaborate sets of behaviors that result in close and prolonged contact with the deceased and the social group. Based on research findings from adjacent social science disciplines, the chapter proposes that mortuary rituals aid in solving adaptive problems following the death of a group member.