ABSTRACT
Cremation holds a significant place in anthropology as a major ritualized mode of dealing with the universal concern of treating dead bodies. Tylor's descriptions are quite different from the early French anthropologists and sociologists whose theoretical approach was more productive in considering death, funerary practices, and cremation as 'social facts'. Double-burial depicts an initial 'wet-phase' covering the body's biological decomposition, and then a 'dry-phase' when ritual activity with the bones realigned the identity of the dead. Grief is complex. The dynamic force that once energized a person's daily life may now seem absent. Time is foundational in social life and, for Hertz, is the key dynamic when comparing earth-burial with cremation. Modern, technological cremation is often quite different from, for example, the case of traditional cremation in India. By sharp contrast, cremation is rare in traditional African contexts as also in traditional Australian societies.
