Amongst the burial precincts that didn’t make it into my book Great Burial Places are sites where bodies are actually permanently disposed of above ground.
The best known are the hanging coffins attached to cliffs in Sichuan province in south-west China. They were placed there by the Bo people, an ethnic minority who died out about 400 years ago. Nobody knows why they disposed of their dead in this way. It could have been because they thought the gods would be able to reach them more easily. It could have been that the hanging coffins prevented bodies from being taken by animals.
Each coffin is made from a hollowed out single tree trunk and was originally protected by a bronze cover. The coffins were placed on rock ledges or laid on horizontal poles that had been wedged into rock crevices. The most recent hanging coffins were made up to about 400 years ago in the middle and later periods of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), while many of the earliest ones date back 1,000 years. The hanging coffin was the most widespread form of burial in ancient southwest China but the practice ended with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the Bo people.
Traditional burials in hanging coffins are also practised by the Igorot tribe of the northern Philippines, though they only take place every few years or so now. One of the most common beliefs behind this practice is that moving the bodies of the dead higher up brings them closer to their ancestral spirits. In addition, the Igorot fear being buried in the ground because they know water will eventually seep into the soil and they will rot. They want a place where their corpse will be safe. The coffins are either tied or nailed to the sides of cliffs. Most measure only about one metre in length as the corpses are buried in the foetal position.
The Igorots believe that you should depart this world the same way you entered it. A deceased person is first placed on a wooden chair, trussed up with rattan and vines and covered with a blanket. It is then positioned facing the main door of the house for relatives to pay their respects. The cadaver is smoked to prevent fast decomposition and as a means of concealing its smell during a vigil for the dead that lasts for a number of days. Before being taken for burial it is secured in the foetal position, wrapped in a blanket and tied with rattan rope while a team of men chips holes into the side of a cliff to hammer in the supports for the coffin.
Hanging coffins of the Igorot people, Philippines.
Amongst the Toraja people of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, the funeral ritual is a most elaborate event and so expensive that the ceremony is often held weeks, months or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the funds needed to cover the cost. During the waiting period, the body of the departed is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the house while its soul is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed. The body is then placed in a coffin containing any possessions needed in the afterlife and hung on a cliff or housed in a cave carved at huge expense into the side of a cliff. Some grave caves are large enough to accommodate the remains of a whole family.
A carved wooden effigy of the deceased, called a tau, is placed at the edge of the cave looking out over the land below. The coffin of a baby or child is usually hung from ropes against a cliff face or from a tree where it can remain for years until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.
