Let's talk about The Dead: what do corpse rituals tell us about ourselves?

For our first meeting of 2025 in the dark of winter, let's turn our attention to the treatment of the deceased among us.
Every society has developed its own distinctive methods for the disposition of the physical remains of the dead. Much of the information we have about many ancient societies actually comes from studying human remains and the artifacts associated with them. What can we learn from a comparison of different death rituals? What do these rituals say about our beliefs about the physical body and its relationship to the Afterlife? Save the date for a morbid but enlightening discussion.

Here are several distinctive death practices :
Cultures That Celebrate Death - TalkDeath

A fascinating article about the different death practices of Neanderthals and humans:
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-ancient-graves-reveal-distinct-burial.html

A good article about Neolithic corpse management
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-neolithic-italian-skull-cache-centuries.html