ABSTRACT
Birth and death are wrapped in uncertainty and mystery, their timing and circumstances largely unpredictable. The two experiences are richly embellished; and where death occurs under propitious circumstances-and perhaps in an idealized setting-people honor their relationships to each other as they welcome the newborn and promise to nurture the child, or bid farewell to the departed. Many early ethnographers focused on death and its management as an example of an everyday life ritual that provides a means to comprehend local cosmologies and ontologies, life purpose and the divine. Anthropologies of death, and the responsibility of the living to ancestors, have provided insight into the relationships of humans with the physical and metaphysical; serious illnesses, dying and death sharpen the need for people to protect other individuals and the social body, and to manage the liminality of the person for whom death is imminent.
