ABSTRACT
To be in one state of personhood is always to potentially be in another. This chapter is concerned with ritualized transformations of the person, primarily through death and mortuary practices. This is crucial to the interpretation of personhood in the past both because we often have an abundance of information about mortuary practice and because death is one of the most dramatic transformations enacted on the person. We will see how persons are altered by death, changed into entities of a different kind, and impacted by the death of others. The discussion will revolve around death and the recently deceased, leaving considerations of the long dead to the next chapter. We will also see that death allows the accentuated transmission of personal qualities throughout society and the cosmos. Once again, examples of death in societies that stress relational personhood will be provided by discussion of Melanesian and Indian ethnographies. Death is both a part of life, and sees a radical shift in the personhood of the deceased and those they leave behind. It is demonstrated here that personhood can be interpreted on the basis of how the dead were treated in ways other than by tracing individual biographies. In doing so this chapter addresses the place of death and the dead in society.
