In Tana Toraja, a mountainous region of Sulawesi, Indonesia, villagers pour massive resources into funeral rituals: lavish feasts, ornate effigies and prized water buffaloes for sacrifice.

I witnessed this funeral ritual in 2024 while accompanying scholar Melanie Nyhof on her fieldwork. Families were expected to stage funerals that matched the social standing of the dead, even if it meant selling land, taking out loans or calling on distant kin for help.

In my own work of studying communal mourning rituals, I take part in ceremonies to see how they unfold. At one of the ceremonies I attended in Tana Toraja, hundreds gathered as gongs echoed through the valley. Guests were served meals over several days, dancers in bright headdresses performed for the crowd, and water buffalo – the most valuable gift a family can give – were led into the courtyard for sacrifice. Mourners described these acts as ways of honoring the deceased.

It wasn’t just in the villages of Tana Toraja that families and clans used rituals to express loyalty for people they knew personally. I saw the same dynamics in cities, where national funerals can draw millions of strangers into a shared experience of unity and loss for a person they never met.

As a scholar who also studies the psychology of rituals, I found that rituals can be one of the most powerful ways humans bond with one other.

In 2022, my colleagues and I surveyed more than 1,600 members of the British public a few days after Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral – both those who had traveled to London to be part of the crowds, and others who had watched the ceremony live on television.

Spectators reported intense grief and a connection with fellow mourners when they viewed the ceremony. On average, they described their sadness as intense. Most also said they felt a strong sense of unity – not only with people standing........

© The Conversation