Bibliography about the history of death and funerary practices

This is a bibliography about the history of the death and funerary practices and cultural and religious traditions surrounding death and the subjects historical context.

Death is the end of an organism's life. It is the irreversible cessation of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Entropy, nature's tendency toward disorder, can contribute to the breakdown of living systems over time. After death, organisms stop exhibiting behavior and generally begin to decompose through various physical and chemical processes. Death can occur at any stage of development, including in infancy. A person may experience a reversible clinical death, which in some cases results in a near-death experience. In humans, brain death establishes that an individual has irreversibly died.

Death is dealt with differently in cultures around the world, and it raises ethical issues such as martyrdom, suicide and euthanasia. In a human being, death is the permanent termination of all life-sustaining processes, when every biological system ceases to operate. Death and its spiritual significance are debated throughout the world. Most cultures dispose of their dead with rituals that developed from spiritual traditions.

Bibliography contains academic level English language books (including translations) and journal articles, published mainly post World War II. Book entries may have references to reviews published in academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful. These reference reviews also function as a resource to find other works on this subject.

Works listed here are cited in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly sources. Each is published by an academic or major press, written by a recognized expert, or substantially reviewed in scholarly journals; borderline cases are omitted. A selection of primary sources are included. Many of the books below carry their own bibliographies; see the Further reading section for other bibliographies, and the External links section for historical sites, academic sites, and museums.

Citations follow APA style. Books have citations to academic journal or mainstream published reviews when available. For books only partly about the subject, relevant chapter or section titles are provided when useful and available. Translators of the original-language edition are included when possible. In cases where a title or name has appeared with more than one English spelling, the most recent published form is used and a footnote documents any earlier title under which the work appeared.

General surveys Ariès, P. (1974). Western attitudes toward death: From the Middle Ages to the present (P. M. Ranum, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press. Ariès, P. (1981). The hour of our death (H. Weaver, Trans.). Knopf. Davies, D. J. (2017). Death, ritual and belief: The rhetoric of funerary rites (3rd ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing. Jupp, P. C., & Gittings, C. (Eds.). (1999). Death in England: An illustrated history. Manchester University Press. Kellehear, A. (2007). A social history of dying. Cambridge University Press. Laqueur, T. W. (2015). The work of the dead: A cultural history of mortal remains. Princeton University Press. Palgi, P., & Abramovitch, H. (1984). Death: A cross-cultural perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13(1), 385–417. Spellman, W. M. (2014). A brief history of death. Reaktion Books. Walter, T. (1991). Modern death: Taboo or not taboo? Sociology, 25(2), 293–310. Whaley, J. (Ed.). (1981). Mirrors of mortality: Studies in the social history of death. Europa Publications.

Historiography Cannon, A. (1989). The historical dimension in mortuary expressions of status and sentiment. Current Anthropology, 30(4), 437–458. McManners, J. (1981). Death and the Enlightenment: Changing attitudes to death among Christians and unbelievers in eighteenth-century France. Clarendon Press. Porter, R. (1999). The hour of Philippe Ariès. Mortality, 4(1), 83–90. Stannard, D. E. (1973). Death and dying in Puritan New England. The American Historical Review, 78(5), 1305–1330. Ucko, P. J. (1969). Ethnography and archaeological interpretation of funerary remains. World Archaeology, 1(2), 262–280. Vovelle, M. (1980). Rediscovery of death since 1960. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 447(1), 89–99. Walter, T. (1994). The revival of death. Routledge.

Archaeology Binford, L. R. (1971). Mortuary practices: Their study and their potential. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, 6–29. Carr, C. (1995). Mortuary practices: Their social, philosophical-religious, circumstantial, and physical determinants. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 2(2), 105–200. Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., & Randsborg, K. (Eds.). (1981). The archaeology of death. Cambridge University Press. Duday, H. (2009). The archaeology of the dead: Lectures in archaeothanatology (A. M. Cipriani & J. Pearce, Trans.). Oxbow Books. Gowland, R., & Knüsel, C. (Eds.). (2006). Social archaeology of funerary remains. Oxbow Books. McKinley, J. I. (1993). Bone fragment size and weights of bone from modern British cremations and the implications for the interpretation of archaeological cremations. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 3(4), 283–287. Nilsson Stutz, L. (2003). Embodied rituals and ritualized bodies: Tracing ritual practices in Late Mesolithic burials. Almqvist & Wiksell International. Parker Pearson, M. (2000). The archaeology of death and burial. Texas A&M University Press. Rakita, G. F. M., Buikstra, J. E., Beck, L. A., & Williams, S. R. (Eds.). (2005). Interacting with the dead: Perspectives on mortuary archaeology for the new millennium. University Press of Florida. Tarlow, S., & Nilsson Stutz, L. (Eds.). (2013). The Oxford handbook of the archaeology of death and burial. Oxford University Press. Thompson, T. (Ed.). (2015). The archaeology of cremation: Burned human remains in funerary studies. Oxbow Books. Ucko, P. J. (1969). Ethnography and archaeological interpretation of funerary remains. World Archaeology, 1(2), 262–280.

Anthropology Bloch, M. (1971). Placing the dead: Tombs, ancestral villages, and kinship organization in Madagascar. Seminar Press. Bloch, M., & Parry, J. (Eds.). (1982). Death and the regeneration of life. Cambridge University Press. Engelke, M. (2019). The anthropology of death revisited. Annual Review of Anthropology, 48(1), 29–44. Goody, J. (1962). Death, property and the ancestors: A study of the mortuary customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa. Stanford University Press. Hertz, R. (2013). Death and the right hand (R. Needham & C. Needham, Trans.). Routledge. Metcalf, P., & Huntington, R. (1991). Celebrations of death: The anthropology of mortuary ritual (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Palgi, P., & Abramovitch, H. (1984). Death: A cross-cultural perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13(1), 385–417. Robben, A. C. G. M. (Ed.). (2004). Death, mourning, and burial: A cross-cultural reader. Blackwell. van Gennep, A. (2013). The rites of passage. Routledge.

Chronological Prehistory Aspöck, E., Klevnäs, A., & Müller-Scheeßel, N. (Eds.). (2020). Grave disturbances: The archaeology of post-depositional interactions with the dead. Oxbow Books. Bradley, R. (1998). The significance of monuments: On the shaping of human experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. Routledge. Brück, J. (2004). Material metaphors: The relational construction of identity in Early Bronze Age burials in Ireland and Britain. Journal of Social Archaeology, 4(3), 307–333. Brück, J. (2019). Personifying prehistory: Relational ontologies in Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press. Croucher, K. (2012). Death and dying in the Neolithic Near East. Oxford University Press. Cummings, V., & Richards, C. (2021). Monuments in the making: Raising the great dolmens in early Neolithic northern Europe. Oxbow Books. Gargett, R. H. (1989). Grave shortcomings: The evidence for Neandertal burial. Current Anthropology, 30(2), 157–190. Grünberg, J. M. (2024). Mesolithic burials and mortuary practices: Traditions, developments and individuality of the early postglacial hunter-fisher-gatherers in Europe. L'Anthropologie, 128(3), 103278. Haddow, S. D., & Knüsel, C. J. (2017). Skull retrieval and secondary burial practices in the Neolithic Near East: Recent insights from Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Bioarchaeology International, 1(1–2). Harding, D. W. (2016). Death and burial in Iron Age Britain. Oxford University Press. Kuijt, I. (2008). The regeneration of life: Neolithic structures of symbolic remembering and forgetting. Current Anthropology, 49(2), 171–197. Parker Pearson, M. (1993). The powerful dead: Archaeological relationships between the living and the dead. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 3(2), 203–229. Pettitt, P. (2010). The Palaeolithic origins of human burial. Routledge. Rendu, W., Beauval, C., Crevecoeur, I., Bayle, P., Balzeau, A., Bismuth, T., Bourguignon, L., Delfour, G., Faivre, J.-P., Lacrampe-Cuyaubère, F., Tavormina, C., Todisco, D., Turq, A., & Maureille, B. (2014). Evidence supporting an intentional Neandertal burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(1), 81–86.

Ancient Assmann, J. (2005). Death and salvation in ancient Egypt (D. Lorton, Trans.). Cornell University Press. Carroll, M. (2006). Spirits of the dead: Roman funerary commemoration in Western Europe. Oxford University Press. Garland, R. (1985). The Greek way of death. Cornell University Press. Hope, V. M. (2007). Death in ancient Rome: A sourcebook. Routledge. Ikram, S., & Dodson, A. (1998). The mummy in ancient Egypt: Equipping the dead for eternity. Thames & Hudson. Morris, I. (1987). Burial and ancient society: The rise of the Greek city-state. Cambridge University Press. Morris, I. (1992). Death-ritual and social structure in classical antiquity. Cambridge University Press. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1995). "Reading" Greek death: To the end of the Classical period. Oxford University Press. Taylor, J. H. (2001). Death and the afterlife in ancient Egypt. British Museum Press. Toynbee, J. M. C. (1971). Death and burial in the Roman world. Thames & Hudson. Vermeule, E. (1979). Aspects of death in early Greek art and poetry. University of California Press.

Medieval Binski, P. (1996). Medieval death: Ritual and representation. Cornell University Press. Booth, P., & Tingle, E. (Eds.). (2021). A companion to death, burial, and remembrance in late medieval and early modern Europe, c. 1300–1700. Brill. Brown, E. A. R. (1981). Death and the human body in the later Middle Ages: The legislation of Boniface VIII on the division of the corpse. Viator, 12, 221–270. Bynum, C. W. (1995). The resurrection of the body in Western Christianity, 200–1336. Columbia University Press. Cohn, S. K. (1988). Death and property in Siena, 1205–1800: Strategies for the afterlife. Johns Hopkins University Press. Daniell, C. (1997). Death and burial in medieval England 1066–1550. Routledge. Effros, B. (2002). Caring for body and soul: Burial and the afterlife in the Merovingian world. Pennsylvania State University Press. Effros, B. (2003). Merovingian mortuary archaeology and the making of the early Middle Ages. University of California Press. Geary, P. J. (1994). Living with the dead in the Middle Ages. Cornell University Press. Gilchrist, R. (2008). Magic for the dead? The archaeology of magic in later medieval burials. Medieval Archaeology, 52(1), 119–159. Härke, H. (2014). Grave goods in early medieval burials: Messages and meanings. Mortality, 19(1), 41–60. McLaughlin, M. (1994). Consorting with saints: Prayer for the dead in early medieval France. Cornell University Press. Paravicini Bagliani, A. (2000). The pope's body (D. S. Peterson, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.