Burial Communities and the Undermining of Royalty in Colonial Africa

Funerary processes are a central part of the formation and sustaining of ideas of community and, thus, integral to ideas of shared "heritage," which is among the concerns of this volume.Some of the reasons for this situation are fairly obvious and wellrehearsed in the anthropological literature.Death challenges the ideal of a continuous and unchanging order where ideas of community are forged.It occurs at unpredictable moments and introduces individual biological discontinuities that funerary processes seek to negate (e.g., as discussed by Bloch and Parry 1982: 223).In mortuary practices, the idea of society is partly in question.Establishing continuity at times of disjunction may not be straightforward; it may lead to protracted and conflictual situations, especially where questions of succession and inheritance are concerned.Nonetheless, funerary practice arguably contributes to forging and reaffirming a sense of common orientation in the face of challenging circumstances.