Funerals/Corpses

“Improper” Disposal

The denial of a proper funeral counted as a severe additional punishment of executed criminals in the European past, for it meant a denial of the transition to the afterworld. These criminals were buried at crossroads, a ritual gesture to prevent the soul from moving elsewhere. Occasionally, their corpses were left hanging at the gallows to decompose. Early anatomists also preyed on these corpses for the purposes of dissection. Survivors frequently fought over the executed corpse with the authorities in order to give the deceased relative their last respects. This was a matter of dignity, of course, but given the close relationship, it might also have been motivated by the fear of a haunting ghost. Ritual measures most probably were also taken with ancient corpses discarded in peat swamps, later discovered by archaeologists, in northwestern Europe. The bog bodies, some strangled with a noose, seem to have been ritually killed. Their disposal in an uninhabitable area indicates their social exclusion, but the places concerned did not serve as garbage dumps. The intentional mutilation of enemy corpses left on battlefields, such as the noses being cut off—a literal and symbolic “loss of face”—is another form of humiliation and dehumanization. Makeshift mass graves resulting from war atrocities come close to the treatment of corpses as garbage. Unintentional occurrences, such as floods, earthquakes, [Page 285]and other disasters with mass loss of life, might at times give the impression of the corpses floating or lying around being merely waste—even more so when it takes considerable time to recover them. There are also historical examples of epidemics in which the death toll was too great for the survivors to organize proper funerals. Recently, Sherpas and others decided to clean the garbage left behind by mountaineers on Mount Everest. The corpses of some 200 climbers who had died and remained there at great height were finally recovered. The exposure of the dead mountaineers to the elements had been the unavoidable result of their tragic deaths in places from which they could not easily be removed.

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