Zoroastrian Towers Of Silence are examples of excarnation.
In archaeology and anthropology, the term excarnation (also known as defleshing) refers to the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial. Excarnation may be achieved through natural means, such as leaving a dead body exposed to the elements or for animals to scavenge; or by butchering the corpse by hand. Following excarnation, some societies retrieved the excarnated bones for burial.[1]
Excarnation has been practiced throughout the world for hundreds of thousands of years. The earliest archaeological evidence of excarnation is from the Awash River Valley in Ethiopia, 160,000 years ago.[2] Examples of excarnation include "sky burials" in parts of Asia, the Zoroastrian "Tower of Silence", and Native American "tree burials". Excarnation is practiced for a variety of spiritual and practical reasons, including the Tibetian spiritual belief that excarnation is the most generous form of burial[3] and the Comanche practical concern that in the winter the ground is too hard for an underground burial.[4][5] Excarnation sites are identifiable in the archaeological record by a concentration of smaller bones (like fingers or toes), which would be the bones that would be the easiest to fall off the body, and that would not be noticed by practitioners of excarnation.[4]
^Booth, Thomas; Bruck, Joanna (2020). "Radiocarbon and histo-taphonomic evidence for curation and excarnation of human remains in Bronze Age Britain" (PDF). Antiquity. 94 (377): 1186–1203. doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.152. hdl:1983/b0e52b84-8d38-4419-92a0-1be5ff8cd1fc. S2CID 224969196.
^Clark, J. Desmond; Beyene, Yonas; WoldeGabriel, Giday; Hart, William K.; Renne, Paul R.; Gilbert, Henry; Defleur, Alban; Suwa, Gen; Katoh, Shigehiro; Ludwig, Kenneth R.; Boisserie, Jean-Renaud; Asfaw, Berhane; White, Tim D. (June 2003). "Stratigraphic, chronological and behavioural contexts of Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia". Nature. 423 (6941): 747–752. Bibcode:2003Natur.423..747C. doi:10.1038/nature01670. PMID 12802333. S2CID 4312418.
^"How Sky Burial Works". 25 July 2011.
^ abMillar, J. F. V. (1981). "Mortuary Practices Of The Oxbow Complex". Canadian Journal of Archaeology. 5 (5): 103–117. JSTOR 41058605 – via JSTOR.
^Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
the term excarnation (also known as defleshing) refers to the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial. Excarnation may be achieved...
of Silence, is a circular, raised structure built by Zoroastrians for excarnation (that is, the exposure of human corpses to the elements for decomposition)...
vultures and corvids. It is a specific type of the general practice of excarnation. It is practiced in Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia, as well...
plan. Anthropodermic bibliopegy (books bound in human skin) Degloving Excarnation Scalping Écorché p.69 Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Haut. p. 69. Ernst...
sea. One theory of use is that Seahenge was a mortuary enclosure for excarnation rather than a meeting-place, like a henge monument. In view of the relatively...
Neanderthals, like some contemporary human cultures, may have practiced excarnation for presumably religious reasons (see Neanderthal behavior § Cannibalism...
other alterations, which could be evidence of mortuary practices like excarnation. Fossils of Herto Man were first recovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto...
to exhaustion and hyperthermia. In Tibetan Buddhism the practice of excarnation – that is, the exposure of dead human bodies to carrion birds and/or...
wood, stone or earthwork barrier, in which dead bodies are placed for excarnation and to await secondary and/or collective burial. There are some parallels...
Global Information