Burial practices

Margarita Ahuanari, left, and Karina Ahuanari look at posters of their mother. The images were placed where they think she was buried at the mass grave that was later renamed the COVID-19 Cemetery in Iquitos.

A mass COVID grave in Peru has left families bereft — and fighting for reburial

10:30am December 04, 2021

by Jason Beaubien

More than 400 people who died of COVID were secretly interred in a mass grave on the outskirts of the city of Iquitos. Families are demanding a proper burial for their loved ones.

Mortician Caitlin Doughty has traveled around the world exploring the ways other cultures approach death.

Books
Arts

Mortician Explores Cultures' Many Paths For 'Sacred Transition' Of Death

2:31pm October 15, 2017

Caitlin Doughty, whose Los Angeles funeral home specializes in alternative ceremonies, traveled the world to collect stories about how different peoples send loved ones off to the great beyond.

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Thomas Laqueur is a professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. His other books include Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud and Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation.

Bodies Through Time: A Historian Traces Our Evolving Relationship With The Dead

12:40pm December 16, 2015

Thomas Laqueur, author of The Work of the Dead, discusses the ways people have dealt with human remains over the course of history. Modern cemeteries, he says, are byproducts of the French Revolution.

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Guinea's Grand Imam, El Hadj Mamadou Saliou Camara, tells his fellow clerics: "If there is any doubt at all, then no one must touch the body."

Guinea's Grand Imam Pulls No Punches In His Ebola Message

2:23pm January 26, 2015

by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton

Religious leaders must play a role in stopping the outbreak in this West African country, the cleric says. And that will mean changing not only attitudes but funeral practices.

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