ABSTRACT
Fights over an inheritance are a matter of course in European societies. Not so among the Tiwi Aborigines from Melville and Bathurst Islands in Australia. The Tiwi have a radically different attitude toward the personal belongings of the deceased. The close relatives of the dead consider the continued presence of these things simply too painful. The objects are not kept as mementos but destroyed. Ritual workers have the task of getting rid of them along with the corpse. The destruction of personal belongings, along with an objectification of immaterial memories, serves to constitute the spirit of the dead. Precisely because the personal belongings of the deceased are destroyed or done away with, the bereaved are forced into a reorientation towards their loss. The absence of the material objects that belonged to the newly dead relative does not diminish but rather enhances the mourners’ memory of the person in question. By preventing a continued social life of these things, the ritual act of the destruction of the personal effects enables the fixation of immaterial memories.
