This paper discusses the place of pigs in mountains Papua New Guinea, particularly Was valley Southern Highlands Province. After a brief introduction to region and their herding arrangements, it gives an ethnographic account use various rites, notably those that feature curing, sorcery cult activities. They prompt consideration relevance concepts used understand these ritual activities, whether...

In this article, I examine how Singaporean Chinese families and funeral professionals work together to ritually manage the meaning and consequences of a death by suicide. While the now dated literature on Chinese mortuary practice emphasizes the formality and rigidity of death rituals, during fieldwork I noted many moments of confusion within ritual, moments of innovation, when relatives broke ...

The emergence of Corded Ware Groups throughout Europe in the 3rd millennium BC is one of the most defining events in European history. From the Wolga to the Rhine communities start to speak Indo-European languages and bury their dead in an extremely similar fashion. Recent ancient DNA-analyses identify a massive migration from the Eurasian steppe as the prime cause for this event. However, ther...

The exegesis of sacred rites in the Talmud is subject to a restriction on the iteration and composition of inference rules. In order to determine the scope and limits of that restriction, the sages of the Talmud deploy those very same inference rules. We present the remarkable features of this early use of self-reference to navigate logical constraints and uncover the hidden complexity behind t...

A Confucian cross-cultural exploration of the ethical treatment robots.