The relationship between mother and infant is a fundamental bond. To reach an improved understanding of the phylogeny of mothers' behavioural responses to the death of their infants will require further research on nonhuman primate species, including both monkeys and apes. The carrying of dead infants by mothers is relatively common in Japanese macaques, with hundreds of reported cases. I focus on behaviours directed towards dead infants in combination with dead-infant carrying, including grooming and licking, in this species. Following a general discussion in a comparative framework, I present detailed descriptions of four illustrative case reports of dead-infant carrying, and associated behaviours, in socially housed captive Macaca fuscata. First: two mothers that carried their dead infants for a period of around one day, a typical period of carry. Second: two occurrences of unusually extended carry-time. These cases also demonstrate apparently contrasting behaviour performed by the same mother towards her dead infant; after partially cannibalising it, she resumed carrying. I argue that more detailed individual case reports, ideally including quantitative coding of video recordings, combined with analyses across large numbers of such cases is desirable. The potentially negative impact on welfare associated with removal of the dead infant while the mother is still ‘motivated' to continue carrying is also discussed.

“What characterizes human's mortuary rites today?" is the underlying question of a new book on Death in the Early Twenty-first Century: Authority, Innovation and Mortuary Rites (Palgrave, 2017). Focusing on tradition, technology, and authority, this anthropological volume challenges classical understandings that mortuary rites are inherently conservative. The contributors examine innovative and enduring ideas and practices of death, which reflect and constitute changing patterns of social relationships, memorialisation, and the afterlife. This cross-cultural study examines the lived experiences of men and women from societies across the globe with diverse religious heritages and secular value systems. The book demonstrates that mortuary practices are not fixed forms, but rather dynamic processes negotiated by the dying, the bereaved, funeral experts, and public institutions. In addition to offering a new theoretical perspective on the anthropology of death, this work provides a rich resource for readers interested in human responses to mortality: the one certainty of human existence. During this presentation, I will introduce the themes and findings of this book that may challenge and contribute to an idea of evolutionary thanatology.

The strong, long-lasting connection with the dead is one of the human uniqueness, but its manifestation varies according to sociocultural situation. Archaeological evidence provides us with fascinating insights about how our treatment of the dead changes through time. I will present a number of cases from the Jomon period of Japan (16,000 ? 2,800 years ago) to outline the changing relationship between the dead and the living. One of the striking features of the Jomon cultures is their closeness. When Jomon people developed large circular settlements in the Middle Jomon period, they often placed their dead at the center of the settlement. Archaeological researches have revealed that they were kinship based societies and their position in the kinship system was immortal. The dead members of the community occupied the central place of settlement until large sedentary groups split apart in the Late Jomon period. Special monuments for burial and ritual apart from settlements were built in northern Tohoku region, which may have served as a meeting place of now dispersed groups. A multiple burial at Nakatsuma shell midden in Ibaraki prefecture suggests that the bones of more than a hundred ancestors were dug up and carefully reburied in a pit, probably with an intention to integrate the dead and the living. In the following Yayoi period, treatment of the dead continued to be important, but the dead and the living were more distant physically, and also mentally.

Palaeolithic archaeology provides the only direct evidence pertinent to the long-term evolution of human thanatology. The recovery of human remains and their contexts can inform at least about the way that some dead bodies were treated, arguably from the australopithecines in Africa (～3 million years ago) onwards. I present here a falsifiable model for the evolution of treatment of the dead, which sees ‘face-to-face' activities replaced by the deliberate deposition of dead bodies at certain points of the landscape by the Middle Pleistocene (～500,000 ? 200,000 years ago) and finally, to the deliberate creation of spaces for the dead in the form of simple burials by Neanderthals and early members of Homo sapiens during the earlier Upper Pleistocene (～120-80,000 years ago). During the later Upper Pleistocene (Upper Palaeolithic) burials and other treatments of the body become more complex, presumably reflecting changes in social complexity that are apparent in other aspects of the archaeological record, until cemeteries as we know them ? places for the burial of relatively large numbers of the dead that are spatially distinct from domestic space ? arise in the context of increasing sedentism towards the end of the Pleistocene. I present this long-term model in ways I hope that are useful for linking this to the primatological record in terms of a hominoid evolution of thanatology.

How non-human animals respond to dead or dying conspecifics, and what their responses may reveal about the extent to which a concept of “death" is present outside the hominin lineage, are questions currently generating intense scientific interest. Answers to these questions may help elucidate the evolutionary origins of a range of death-related psychological states and behaviours in our species, such as grief, mourning, understanding of mortality and mortuary practices. In addition, they raise welfare considerations in the case of captive animals, regarding the management of situations involving death or dying. I will describe a number of case studies from our closest evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees, together with a review of examples that have accumulated to date across a broad spectrum of mammalian species (including other primates, canids, ungulates, elephants, and cetaceans). Documented responses range from attending next to the deceased conspecific and vocal or behavioural indicators of distress, through focused curiosity directed at the body and active caretaking such as grooming, licking or carrying, to sexual behaviour and aggression. Drawing on this emerging body of evidence, I will explore what cues might elicit these responses, which factors might determine what combination of responses is exhibited, and what these may reveal about animals' underlying psychological states. In doing so, I will present an emerging framework for interpreting such behavioural observations, and the care we need to take to neither overinterpret nor too easily dismiss them as being relevant to humans' understanding of death.

When someone close to us dies, we are obligated to organize a funeral. Funerals are among the most significant events to occur in our lives. We arrange them using our own assets and labor, and that of our families. There is some tragic irony in having to be rational when planning funerals, since these ceremonies are intended for the non-rational purpose of providing an occasion where people can release feelings of sadness, and accept the death of a loved one. This presentation is organized as follows. In part 1 is the overviews of transformation and actual situation of the Japanese funerals in recent day. Part 2 elaborates on the finding that the lower a society's gross domestic product (GDP), the higher the level of participation in funerals, and, conversely, the higher a society's GDP, the lower the level of participation comparing several Asian countries. In part 3, we will consider the meaning of social bond with the dead for human beings from sociological point of view.