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A wide-ranging treatment on the meaning of death, and its juxtaposition with life, from biological, cultural, and spiritual perspectives. Dozens of case studies accompany the principal essays written by scholars, Indigenous community members, and curators of the exhibition Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery. This volume offers a richly illustrated companion to the exhibition, produced by Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, and contains full page photographs of the stunning objects in the exhibit, most from the Field Museum’s collections. This volume is intended to engage visitors to the exhibition and members of the general public who want to delve more fully into questions surrounding death and the multiple religious, historical, and cultural perspectives on it. Although not a comprehensive guide, the book touches on many world religions and case studies drawn from five continents.

EDITORS
Patrick Ryan Williams is Curator of Archaeological Science and Gary M. Feinman is the MacArthur Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

Luis Muro Ynoñán is an Anthropology Postdoctoral Scientist at the Field Museum and a Lecturer in Archaeology in the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

List of contributors: Álvaro Amat, Foreman Bandama, Deborah Bekken, J. P. Brown, Kyrah Malika Daniels, Stacy Drake, Chelsea Foxwell, Mitch Hendrickson, Chapurukha Kusimba, Brad Lepper, Robert D. Martin, Benjamin Miller, Kimberly Mutcherson, Donna J. Nash, William Parkinson, William Pestle, William Schweiker, Nicole M. Slovak, Emily Teeter, Alaka Wali, Meredith Whitfield, Laurie Zoloth

REVIEW
‘A wealth of anthropological perspectives and done in very accessible language. The book greatly amplifies the message of the exhibition’ Dr William Fitzhugh, Director, Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• List of Figures
• 1. Introduction
  Patrick Ryan Williams and Gary M. Feinman
• 1A Big Questions: A Framework for Exploring Death:
  Benjamin Miller and Meredith Whitfield
• 2. The Journey from Life to Death: Biology of the Human Life Cycle and Our Attempt to Control It
  Robert D. Martin
• 2A Sekishinsai Okada Tadaharu 赤心斎 岡田忠遥: Nine Stages of Bodily Decay (Kusōzu)
  Chelsea Foxwell
• 2B Daoist Immortals, the Lingzhi Fungus, and the Search for Immortality
  Deborah Bekken
• 2C On Health Disparities and Motherless Children
  Kimberly Mutcherson
• 2D Response to the Pandemic: Creativity in the Face of Precarity
  Alaka Wali
• 3. Soul and Vital Force: Vibrant Life Matters and Mortuary Arts in Africana Religions and Beyond
  Kyrah Malika Daniels
• 3A Mesoamerican Cosmologies: Death, Maize, and the Ballgame
  Gary M. Feinman
• 3B The Inca Capac Hucha
  Patrick Ryan Williams
• 3C The Yorùbá Ere Ibeji: Reincarnation of Twins
  Foreman Bandama
• 3D Sex, Death, and Life Regeneration in the Moche World, 200–900 ce
  Luis Muro Ynoñán
• 4. Performing Death
  Luis Muro Ynoñán
• 4A Chancay Burials
  Nicole M. Slovak
• 4B Egyptian Mummification
  Emily Teeter
• 4C The Ghanaian Fantasy Canoe Coffin: A Box with Proverbs
  Foreman Bandama
• 4D Tsavo Shrines
  Chapurukha M. Kusimba
• 5. Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Death
  William Schweiker
• 5A The Chevra Kadisha
  Laurie Zoloth
• 5B The Guna, Molas, and Religious Syncretism
  Alaka Wali
• 5C Death and the Reclining Buddha
  Mitch Hendrickson
• 5D Day of the Dead
  Álvaro Amat
• 6. Social Endurance beyond Human Death
  Gary M. Feinman and Patrick Ryan Williams
• 6A The Magdalenian Skeleton from Cap Blanc
  Robert D. Martin, J. P. Brown, Stacy Drake, William Pestle, and William Parkinson
• 6B The Mortuary and Commemorative Poles from Skidegate, British Columbia, Canada
  Luis Muro Ynoñán and Gary M. Feinman
• 6C The Hopewell Collective
  Brad Lepper
• 6D Pyramids and Standing Stones: Monuments for the Dead
  Donna J. Nash
• Appendix A: Spanish Translation of the Introduction
  Introducción
  Patrick Ryan Williams y Gary M. Feinman