Buried Alive

Burial alive has been used as a form of torture to induce panic and physiological breakdown, and state endorsed and illegal cases have been documented from India, Russia, China, the United States, and Europe. This entry focuses on a much more extraordinary form of live burial: that which occurs as a part of social and cultural practice. Being buried alive is not simply a form of physical disposal; it also serves an important function in facilitating immortality or special deaths. It can be used to immortalize kingship, allowing the surviving family to maintain a special status through kinship bonds with an immortal ancestor. It can also be used to dispose of unwanted children, allowing the parents or relatives to effectively miss the point of death. In cases of sacrifice and regicide, kings, women, and children can transcend death either to avoid repercussions or to achieve immortality. Being buried alive is also feared, and in the 19th century, this fear affected coffin design and the material used to dispose of the dead.

Regicide and Live Burial: The Anthropological Evidence

Among the northern tribes of the Dinka of southern Sudan, there is the memory of regicide. It has been decades or more since a leader has been buried alive; however, when it did take place, it was an important means for the continual legitimization of power by the ruling family. The act of being buried took several days. A large hole was excavated at the highest point within an ancient cattle-campsite. Two wooden platforms were constructed, and for 2 days songs were sung to honor the bulls. Afterwards, and with the family gathered, the bulls were slaughtered, and a bed was made from their hides. While the bed was being constructed, the ritual entered a liminal stage involving feasting and sexual promiscuity. After the bed was completed, war shields were placed on it, the king was interred, and a chamber was constructed within the hole. The chamber was covered with cow dung, but a small hole was left in the surface so the men of the tribe could ask the incumbent for divination until he stopped replying and had finally been taken into the earth. When the chamber collapsed, a shrine was constructed on the site marking the completion of the process of the king passing into the afterlife. This transition was unique to his role as chief, which allowed him not just a special death but to become associated with Dinka ideas of immortality and divinity.

The anthropologists who reported the burial act described in the previous paragraph did not actually witness the act of regicide, and the practice seems to have been outlawed with the advent of British imperial colonization. This has led to controversy surrounding this topic and, as with the study of sacrifice, anthropologists have suggested that the practice of regicidal live burial is symbolic and never actually took place. However, scholars of this topic must be careful not to sanitize alien societies by forcing them to fit with Western attitudes and ideals.

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