Becoming an Ancestor: The Isthmus Zapotec Way of Death

A striking look at the death rituals of an indigenous community in North America.

Powerful and beautifully written, this is the story of the Isthmus Zapotecs of southern Mexico and their unbroken chain of ancestors and collective memory over the generations. Mortuary beliefs and actions are collective and pervasive in ways not seen in the United States, a resonant deep structure across many domains of Zapotec culture.

Anthropologist Anya Peterson Royce draws upon forty years of participant re...