Cremation as a funeral practice is unique in the sense that throughfire as a medium the dead are actively incorporated into otherspheres and realms. The problem of decaying corpses has beensolved through history in one way or another, irrespective of culture.Although Christianity has seen cremation as destructive andnegative, obliterating death and destroying the c...

Death matters and the matters of death are initially, and to a large extent, the decaying flesh of the corpse. Cremation as a ritual practice is the fastest and most optimal way of dissolving the corpse’s flesh, either by annihilation or purification, or a combination. Still, cremation was not the final rite, and the archaeological record testifies that the dead re...