ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on people from small scale societies, generally those with a population under 1,000,000. For many people in Euro-American societies, a person is either dead or alive, but for people in many small scale societies there may be an assortment of categories and gradations of dead. People who are accustomed to a single funeral ceremony may not appreciate that the additional rituals that are common in small scale societies are likely to have enormous religious, social, and personal value for the survivors and may be necessary to help the deceased, to guard against harm from the deceased, to heal and usefully alter the relationships of the living, to protect others from something dangerous about the most bereaved, or for other reasons. There are many small scale societies in which ritual specialists, people with special information, skills, power, and rights, lead in carrying out death rituals.
