Corpse in the context of Burial rites

A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. For a dedicated overview of contemporary Australian practices, see Funeral rituals and trends in Australia. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation.

The funeral usually includes a ritual through which the corpse receives a final disposition. Depending on culture and religion, these can involve either the destruction of the body (for example, by cremation, sky burial, decomposition, disintegration or dissolution) or its preservation (for example, by mummification). Differing beliefs about cleanliness and the relationship between body and soul are reflected in funerary practices. A memorial service (service of remembrance or celebration of life) is a funerary ceremony that is performed without the remains of the deceased person. In both a closed casket funeral and a memorial service, photos of the deceased representing stages of life would be displayed on an altar. Relatives or friends would give out eulogies in both services as well.

Cremation is a method of final disposition of a corpse through burning.

Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite and as an alternative to burial. In some countries, including India, Nepal, and Syria, cremation on an open-air pyre is an ancient tradition. Starting in the 19th century, cremation was introduced or reintroduced into other parts of the world. In modern times, cremation is commonly carried out with a closed furnace (cremator), at a crematorium.

A zombie (Haitian French: zombi; Haitian Creole: zonbi; Kikongo: zumbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. In modern popular culture, zombies appear in horror genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magical practices in religions like Vodou. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as fungi, radiation, gases, diseases, plants, bacteria, viruses, etc.

The English word zombie was first recorded in the 18th century; dictionaries trace its origins to Bantu languages, such as Kimbundu nzumbi 'ghost, spirit'. One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. B. Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929), the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.

A body (Latin: corpus) is the physical material of an organism. It is only used for organisms which are in one part or whole. There are organisms which change from single cells to whole organisms: for example, slime molds. For them the term 'body' would mean the multicellular stage. Other uses:

• Plant body: plants are modular, with modules being created by meristems and the body generally consisting of both the shoot system and the root system, with the body's development being influenced by its environment.
• Cell body: here it may be used for cells like neurons which have long axons (nerve fibres). The cell body is the part with the nucleus in it.

The body of a dead person is also called a corpse or cadaver. The dead bodies of vertebrate animals and insects are sometimes called carcasses.

Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are items buried along with a body.

They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into an afterlife, or offerings to gods. Grave goods may be classed by researchers as a type of votive deposit. Most grave goods recovered by archaeologists consist of inorganic objects such as pottery and stone and metal tools, but organic objects that have since decayed were also placed in ancient tombs. If grave goods were to be useful to the deceased in the afterlife, then favorite foods or everyday objects were supplied. Oftentimes, social status played a role in what was left and how often it was left. Funerary art is a broad term but generally means artworks made specifically to decorate a burial place, such as miniature models of possessions - including slaves or servants - for "use" in an afterlife. (Ancient Egypt sometimes saw the burial of real servants with the deceased. Similar cases of human sacrifice of slaves, retainers and wives feature in graves in (for example) the Americas, ancient Germania, and ancient Mesopotamia. Compare suttee.)

Well poisoning is the act of malicious manipulation of potable water resources in order to cause illness or death, or to deny an opponent access to fresh water resources.

Well poisoning has been historically documented as a strategy during wartime since antiquity, and was used both offensively (as a terror tactic to disrupt and depopulate a target area) and defensively (as a scorched earth tactic to deny an invading army sources of clean water). Rotting corpses (both animal and human) thrown down wells were the most common implementation; in one of the earliest examples of biological warfare, corpses known to have died from common transmissible diseases of the Pre-Modern era such as bubonic plague or tuberculosis were especially favored for well-poisoning.

A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have customarily been refrigerated to delay decomposition.

Legal death is the recognition under the law of a particular jurisdiction that a person is no longer alive. In most cases, a doctor's declaration of death (variously called) or the identification of a corpse is a legal requirement for such recognition. A person who has been missing for a sufficiently long period of time (typically at least several years) may be presumed or declared legally dead, usually by a court. When a death has been registered in a civil registry, a death certificate may be issued. Such death certificate may be required in a number of legal situations, such as applying for probate, claiming some benefits, or making an insurance claim.

The lich /lɪtʃ/ is an undead creature found in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game. Liches are spellcasters who seek to defy death by magical means.

The term derives from lich, an archaic term for a corpse. Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax stated that he based the description of a lich included in the game on the short story "The Sword of the Sorcerer" (1969) by Gardner Fox.

A burial tree or burial scaffold is a tree or simple structure used for supporting corpses or coffins. They were once common among the Balinese, the Naga people, certain Aboriginal Australians, and the Sioux and other North American First Nations.