Why Do People Bury Objects With The Dead?

For more than 100,000 years, humankind has been preoccupied with death. We don't just bury, cremate, or even mummify the dead; we perform elaborate rituals that involve placing objects—grave goods—with our deceased loved ones.

The practice of depositing grave goods continues to this day and is so universal that some psychologists think evolution predisposed our species to think about the welfare of the dead. To determine if this predisposition is real, scholars have begun cataloguing the reasons that people give for leaving grave goods or wanting them at their own funerals.

A clear historical reason for grave good deposition is to prepare the deceased for the next life. Ancient Egyptians placed Shabti dolls with the dead to do their chores in the afterlife, while Ancient Greeks and Romans placed a coin in the deceased’s mouth to pay the ferryman, Charon. From China to Scandinavia, people have buried food, drink, weapons, books, and maps to help their honoured dead on their journeys.

If provisioning the dead is the purpose of grave goods, these objects represent the earliest evidence for religion anywhere in the world. There are 100,000-year-old human graves inside the Qafzeh and Skhul Caves in Israel that contain animal bones, seashells, primitive flint tools, and red ochre (a pigment used in rituals). The presence of these objects suggests that people had afterlife beliefs 100,000 years ago.

Today, people are still leaving objects with the dead, including photographs, jewellery, special items of clothing, stuffed animals, blankets, cigars, alcoholic drinks, books, religious items (e.g., Bibles and rosaries), and messages to the deceased. According to the people surveyed, at least some of the items are for the deceased’s continued use and enjoyment.

Grave Goods Have Other Purposes

The story isn't that simple though. Why, for example, do atheists leave grave goods? They don’t usually express belief in consciousness continuing after death—a position called extinctivism (this article will treat atheism as interchangeable with extinctivism, although there are exceptions).

Scholars (cited above) have proposed other reasons for grave goods that are consistent with atheism, including the emotional comfort of the living. For example, leaving a grave good may represent a symbolic act of giving, or it helps the living to obtain closure, or it removes an object that is too painful to keep around, or it comforts the family to know the deceased was loved.

In some indigenous societies, grave goods can also demonstrate the wealth, religiosity, and social status of the person providing them: something that anthropologists call social signalling. For example, you may want to show the grieving family that you cared for the deceased and respect their traditions.

A further reason concerns grave goods that supposedly contain the deceased’s essence. In some cases, this may be literal, such as sweat on a pair of glasses. In other cases, the object is believed to magically contain part of the deceased’s essence or aura, and that depositing it ensures that every part of them is in the grave. Of course, this magical contagion can also be a reason to keep an object for oneself (e.g., to remember them, or in the case of celebrity memorabilia).

A final reason is simply to honour the deceased's wish to be buried with something (e.g., a wedding ring), although this brings the deceased's motivations into focus. 

Are Atheists Overriding Their Implicit (Unconscious) Afterlife Beliefs?

The problem with these nonreligious reasons for leaving grave goods (e.g., emotional comfort and social signalling) is that atheists don’t mention them any more than believers do, and these reasons generally aren’t that popular. A 2023 study found that the most popular reasons for leaving grave goods are for the deceased's afterlife use or because the object contains “part of” their essence (both are supernatural reasons).

The study found that atheists and believers only differed in their reasoning when the afterlife was explicitly mentioned (e.g., “to benefit them in the afterlife”). When the afterlife was merely alluded to, such as by implying the deceased’s continued consciousness and their ability to think and feel (e.g., “so that they will know I loved them” or “so that they will be at rest”), atheists endorsed these reasons just as much as believers did.

These reasons were not designed to catch atheists out either. When atheists were asked to write down their own reasons for wanting grave goods for themselves (i.e., when they die), the same phrases that implied a continuation of consciousness appeared (e.g., “I want it with me” as if there is still a "me").

The pattern of results suggested that human beings implicitly (unconsciously) reason as if death is not the end, but that atheists are able to override this reasoning when explicitly asked about it. This finding does not require that an afterlife exists. Rather, atheists display a remarkable ability to override a biological predisposition by explicitly reasoning about the lack of evidence for an afterlife.

So why does this predisposition exist? Some research points to it being an evolutionary accident. Human beings have many useful adaptations, including episodic memory—the ability to storyboard and relive important events—and its effects on how we imagine, predict, and prepare for unknown, future environments.

As a side-effect, these adaptations could make it difficult to think about "being dead" in an extinctivist way (as a non-event that is not experienced), meaning that the default is to think, “when I’m dead, I’ll be X, think Y, and feel Z.” This simulation constraint may be why Neanderthals, who may have lacked episodic memory, did not leave grave goods.

A predisposition to believe in continued consciousness might explain several other psychological studies. For example. a study found that most people (including atheists) find it difficult to imagine the cessation of mental and emotional states (e.g., loving one’s family) but easier to accept the cessation of physical states (e.g., being hungry); a distinction that could explain why most cultures think of the dead as ethereal spirits or souls.

A further study found that our difficulty with mental death diminishes with age (perhaps following a materialistic education), suggesting that it's an evolutionary default we are born with. Finally, studies have also found that atheists can be reluctant to sell their souls and become distressed by the potential actions of a ghost; behaviours that are inconsistent with their stated beliefs.

In sum, implicit (unconscious) afterlife beliefs appear to be the primary motivation for grave good practices, including among atheists, and that our difficulty with imagining being dead may have been part of the human condition since at least the Palaeolithic era (~100,000 years ago).