ABSTRACT
Many of the early contributors to the comparative sociology of religion, especially Edward Tylor and Herbert Spencer, saw in the institutions that center upon death—funeral ceremonies, cults of the dead, and beliefs in an afterlife—the kernel of their studies. Sir William Ridge-way, for example, not only found in the performances surrounding death the source of all religion, but also discerned the origin of Greek tragedy and of the Olympic games in the commemoration and propitiation of the dead. 1 Recent trends have led to a discounting of the validity of speculations about the origin of social phenomena and to a concentration upon the synchronic studies of particular societies. There can be little doubt that this change has greatly contributed to the development of field anthropology; on the other hand, it has also perhaps tended to encourage a degree of ethnographic myopia.
