The purpose of the article is to systematize the main concepts developed within the boundaries of the theory of “rites of passage”, to identify the general and particular in them regarding funeral rituals and ideas about death as a stage of human existence. The theory of “rites of passage” is a methodology with a high heuristic potential, which opens up wide possibilities for understanding the meaning and functions of rituals associated with existentially important stages of human life. According to the position of the anthropologists who laid the foundations of this methodology, among the main varieties of “rites of passage”, birth rites and funeral rituals are among the most common and significant. Funeral rites belong to the category of the earliest and most important types of symbolic activity for culture. In line with the theory of “rites of passage”, concepts have been developed that have their own specifics, but are similar in the main thing - that funeral rites are one of the most stable components of religion.
Keywords: rites of passage, ritual, funeral rites, preliminal stage, liminary stage, postliminary stage
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2022_2_53
About the author
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Alexey E. Popov – Junior Researcher at the Laboratory of Archeology and Anthropology, |