Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggests that bodily death and material decay are a central point of reference that offers key insights into human perceptions of time. It explores the way human beings handle death and decay by means of social technologies, including timework, ritual and material objects, which help establish human temporalities. Hertz's study of secondary burial ceremonies among the Dayak of Indonesia laid an important foundation for conceptualizing death as a social process in time, rather than simply a biological point in time. In another significant contribution to the study of death as a social phenomenon, anthropologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry developed and substantiated the argument that funeral rituals always include ideas about the regeneration of life through symbols of fertility and rebirth. The book takes its point of departure in original empirical studies, rather than in philosophical and theological thinking.