Authors suggest that in a majority of studied societies, kin of the deceased tend to engage ritually in risky prolonged and intimate preparation behaviors with corpses. This occurs namely in visual exposure and tactile interaction. Authors hypothesize that this extended contact not only allows true confirmation of death (through exposure to many cues), but also facilitates acceleration of a grieving process that returns the bereaved to a normal state of social functioning.

This dissertation discusses the divided theoretical approach to how reincarnation, animism, spirits, and general religious beliefs occur within societies cross-culturally. Matlock offers evidence to support Tyler, contradicting the generally accepted Durkheimian approach, arguing that the belief about souls and spirits may originate in dreams and other empirical experiences, in turn informing and shaping social organization. Durkheim argued the opposite, claiming that religious beliefs reflect social organization such as the clan and kinship. The author states 33 quantitative hypotheses to be tested using 30 of the first 60 sample societies available in the HRAF Probability Sample.

A literature review of burial customs and their related assumptions and data orientations is presented. A cross-cultural study suggests there are associations between measures of mortuary ritual variety and societal structural complexity.

This paper examines death customs meant to break ties with a deceased spouse. The authors propose that remarriage rates are higher where these tie-breaking customs are practiced and that this association is stronger where sororate or levirate remarriage is practiced. Empirical support is found for these hypotheses.

"This paper presents an exploratory attempt to solve the problem of how to infer traits for which no direct material evidence remains." The author suggests that the archeologically defined community pattern can predict several sociocultural traits. Results support this hypothesis.

This article investigates a broad hypothesis that cultural traits diversify with sociocultural development. Results suggest that sociocultual development is associated with certain aspects of aesthetic and ritual culture, and that cultural elaboration may be correlated with some sexual norms and tendency toward cannibalism, human sacrifice, and slavery.

This study examines the relationship between existence of status hierarchies and the level of expense on burials. The aim is to assess the archaeological assumption that more expenditure on burials reflects elite statuses in society. Author concludes that competition is a more direct predictor of burial type than status hierarchy. Implications for archaeology are discussed.

Using 57 cultures from the Human Relations Area Files database, this paper examines the function and effectiveness of the belief of punitive ancestors in small-scale societies. The authors found that belief in dangerous ancestral entities is widespread and common and that harm is preventable through ritualized mortuary practices. The authors concluded that the fear of ancestral spirits did not promote social cooperation or inhibit self-interest behavior, contrary to the supernatural punishment hypothesis.

This article investigates bereaved persons’ ways of coping with anger and aggression. Analysis suggests that anger and aggression are reduced in cultures where ritual specialists are involved before and during body disposal. Patterns in customary isolation or marking of bereaved persons are also discussed.

In order to evaluate an adaptive justification for restriction of ritualized physical contact, the authors test association between three manifestations of physical interaction and prevalence of pathogens cross-culturally. Their expectation, supported by two of the three tested hypotheses, is that higher pathogen prevalence will lead to customs of restricted physical contact. Both cultural and biological evolution are suggested to be influential in selecting for physically intimate behaviors.