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The ancient Egyptians were the first culture that we know of systematically to correlate an afterlife with good and evil actions in this world. Far from being obsessed with death, the Egyptians were above all lovers of life. Their ideas about post‐mortem survival affirmed the value of life in this world. Their joyous feeling for a bounteous land teeming with fertility carried over into a hope for resurrection—entailing mummification—that lacks the pessimism of many earlier cultures. The evolution of belief in Osiris as judge of the dead, from the early Pyramid texts to the Book of the Dead, both enforces fear of post‐mortem judgment and seems to open the possibility of resurrection to all, and not only to Pharaoh and his immediate circle.

Work carried out on the animal mummies in the Egyptian Museum, as well as in other collections, shows that, like humans, animals were mummified in a variety of ways throughout Egyptian history. This chapter describes different methods employed for mummification. Mummification basically involves the evisceration and desiccation of the body. Desiccation is done using common salt or natron that draws out the bodily fluids leaving the dry husk. The second method of mummification involves the washing out of the intestines, and drying the body, using natron, before anointing and wrapping it. The third method of mummification uses no incision for evisceration. Rather, oil of cedar or pine was injected into the anus, the orifice plugged, and the liquid left to melt the viscera. A fourth method used on some animal mummies involved defleshing. A fifth variation on mummification involved the total immersion of live birds in vats of melted resin/pitch/bitumen.

The author of this chapter made a decision to study the animal mummy collection, and initiated the Animal Mummy Project, in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Egyptian Museum, with Nasry Iskander being the designated collaborator from the latter institution. This project was one of the first modern, large-scale, non-destructive studies of animal mummies of all species undertaken anywhere in the world. The chapter's author's primary interest lay in studying the process of mummification when applied to animals, to see if chronological and geographical changes/particularities could be mapped, to understand the different categories of animal mummies, and to learn more about the ancient Egyptian environment. The ultimate aim of this project, after the mummies had been examined, was to conserve them, to produce a new, updated Catalogue Général volume as the original one had been rendered obsolete, as well as to reinstall the mummies in a more sympathetic museum environment.

In 2004, excavation in advance of the construction of a bypass around Mitchelstown in County Cork uncovered a number of pits on the banks of the Gradoge River (Kiely and Sutton 2007). On the bottom of one of these pits, three pottery vessels and a ceramic spoon had been laid on two flat stones. The pots had been deposited in a row: at the centre of the row was a small vessel that clearly models a human face with eyes, a protruding nose and ears, and, at the base of the pot, two feet (cover images). Oak charcoal from the pit returned a date of 1916–1696 cal BC. This find calls into question one of the basic conceptual building blocks that underpins our own contemporary understanding of the world—the distinction between people and objects—for it hints that some artefacts may have been imbued with human qualities and agentive capacities. This book is about the relationship between Bronze Age people and their material worlds. It explores the impact of the post-Enlightenment ‘othering’ of the non-human on our understanding of Bronze Age society. As we shall see, there is in fact considerable evidence to suggest that the categorical distinctions drawn in our own cultural context, for example between subject and object, self and other, and culture and nature, were not recognized or articulated in the same way during this period. So too contemporary forms of instrumental reason—encapsulated in a particular understanding of what constitutes logical, practical action and in the distinction we make between the ritual and the secular—have had a profound effect on how we view the Bronze Age world. Our understanding of the Bronze Age has undoubtedly changed dramatically since Christian Jürgensen Thomsen first popularized the term in his famous formulation of the three-age system in 1836 (Morris 1992). The very notion of a ‘Bronze Age’ foregrounds concepts of technical efficiency and advancement that doubtless chimed with the preoccupations and cultural values of Thomsen’s audience in the industrializing world in the nineteenth century.

Most studies of Iron Age burial practices in Britain begin by recognizing that, with a few notable but limited exceptions, there is no recurrent and regular form of disposal of the dead for most of the first millennium BC. We have questioned whether this is a reasonable expectation, that there should be a regular funerary rite, or whether this is simply conditioned by contemporary religious or secular standards. More specifically, our expectation of a regular funerary rite involving the intact inhumation of the dead or the deposit or disposal of the cremated remains as an entity may not conform to regular Iron Age practice, in which it seems that fragmentation and dispersal may have been common. Is there any reason why a diversity of practices, more difficult to recognize archaeologically, should not have been deployed in prehistory, already perhaps long before the Iron Age when the absence of recurrent and regular cemeteries happens to register archaeologically as a conspicuous omission? The fact that in certain regions at certain times one particular mode of disposal predominates, or happens to leave conspicuous archaeological traces, may lead archaeologists to expect a measure of standardization of practice that does not represent the actual diversity of prevailing rites. The real issue, therefore, is not to explain the absence of a conspicuous or recurrent rite, but the basis of choice that made communities adopt various practices, burying some individuals or groups in graves or cemeteries, others in re-used grain storage pits, and disposing of the disarticulated remains of others in various locations around a settlement. A second question, however, is when did the disposal of the dead in Britain first take the form of cemeteries, the recurrent and regular form of which might encourage us to believe that the majority of the population was disposed of in this way? It would be easy to respond by saying that there are formal cemeteries in Neolithic long barrows and chambered tombs, but sacred landscapes like the Boyne valley in County Meath or the Kilmartin valley in Argyll suggest that these special tombs may have been for much more than disposal of the dead.

The Chinchorro were coastal hunter-gatherers of the Archaic period in the Atacama Desert, who artificially mummified their infants and fetuses. Their complex mummification process led to the transformation of these bodies into small effigies that were commonly finished with a facial mask and a wig. This process is exceptional as no other pre-state group in the Andes, or the word, has it. From a bioarchaeological standpoint, this complex funerary treatment reveals that the Chinchorro held their infants in high regard. These individuals may have had a symbolic role in the social reproduction of Chinchorro groups.

The island of Sicily is home to a large number of spontaneously mummified remains, dating from the 16th to 19th centuries CE, most of which are located in the renowned Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, where the oldest mummy is buried (Brother Silvestro da Gubbio, who died in 1599). These remains represent unique evidence of deviant practices within the South of Italy, as the large majority of remains was interred in communal graves, cemeteries, or burials within religious buildings. Only a selection of the local population, mainly formed by members of the aristocracy, middle class citizens, and the clergy, underwent a complex treatment that included dehydration of the corpses, cleaning, and filling of the cavities with either animal or vegetal matter, and eventually clothing and exposure in either a wall niche or a coffin. Since 2007, the Sicily Mummy Project has aimed to scientifically investigate this important biocultural heritage and understand local mummification practices. This study sheds new light on mortuary customs and funeral variability in the region and contextualizes and interprets this treatment of the dead through comparisons with the anthropological and sociological literature.