The Deceased’s Life Cycle Rituals in Nepal

Description

While anthropologists seek to investigate death rituals as part of life and society, archaeologists are mainly concerned with burials as an important context for the deposition and preservation of artefacts. Problems arise when the aim is to elaborate the significance of mortuary rituals in the past, and how these funeral practices were related to the prehistoric people and societies as a contextual whole. The aim of this book is to present an ethnoarchaeological analysis of life cycle rituals from funeral practice and its manifestation in the mortuary remains of Brahmans and Magars in the Central Dhaulagiri Zone of Nepal. The author explores how the complexity and diversity of funeral practices may enable archaeologists to penetrate into the social world behind the remains of death. This study goes beyond the artefacts to the humans who died and those who performed their funeral rites, and who thereafter look at the mortuary remains.