Death, eschatology and exotic indigenous deathways have long held a privileged position in the ethnographic and popular literature on Borneo. Until the publication of this study, however, ancestors have remained a strangely neglected topic. Differing from classic ethnographic representations of ancestor worship based on Sino-African material, this volume will be not just of interest to regional specialists; it will also enrich the general anthropological theory of ancestors, kinship and religion.

Pascal Couderc studied anthropology at the EHESS, Paris. He has done extensive fieldwork among the Uut Danum of West Kalimantan. His main research interests are oral epics and death.