Burials of eminent Quanzhen masters, particularly in the form of extravagant assembly-funerals, served as the initial step in the development of a Quanzhen-style ancestor worship. This ancestor worship functioned as the bedrock of a thriving Quanzhen lineage-building movement in thirteenth-century north China. Quanzhen Daoists attributed great significance to the physical remains of a lineage's founding master and commonly conducted multiple burials of the master. Each instance of reburial presented an opportunity for specific lineage members to assert their lineage identity, as well as ownership over the founding master's spiritual and material legacy. Lineage members commonly materialized their ancestor worship through a series of memorial objects established within a hosting monastery, including tombs, statues, portraits, memorial shrines, and commemorative steles. These lineage-building efforts strengthened dynamic networks of people, monasteries, and material culture, shaping regional interactions and transformations in north China under Mongol rule.

En los Andes surandinos, las prácticas funerarias incluyeron una diversidad de actos rituales en torno a los restos de los difuntos que iban más allá de la preparación del cuerpo y el lugar de depósito. El desarrollo y las características de estos actos dependían principalmente de la condición social que tenían los muertos en vida. En el Pucará de Tilcara, definido como capital de la provincia incaica de Omaguaca, se detectan una amplia variedad de formas de inhumación, pero en este trabajo abordamos el caso de un contexto mortuorio de una mujer, cuya muerte se estima ocurrió hacia el final del período Incaico o inicios de la época Hispano-Indígena. Análisis interdisciplinarios del contexto arqueológico y, particularmente, los estudios entomológicos de la fauna cadavérica y bioantropológicos permitieron determinar que esta mujer estuvo expuesta antes de quedar sepultada por procesos naturales. Proponemos que esta exposición ocurrió en el marco del culto a los ancestros difundido por todo el imperio, y sirvió para remarcar su estatus social. El acompañamiento mortuorio y los análisis de estroncio sugieren que la mujer formó parte de un grupo de elite oriundo de otra región del Tawantinsuyu, que pudo trasladarse y asentarse en la Quebrada durante la caída del Imperio inca, buscando refugio ante la inminente envestida española.

Ancestor worship has been a dominant religious form in ancient as well as modern China. It has shaped thought and behaviour for millennia, and has been used by élites as propaganda legitimizing their political positions. Ancestors can be created and modified, so the nature of the ancestral cult has changed through time. Using archaeological data from China, this article first enables an exploration of the earliest manifestations and the development of ancestor-worship ritual in the Neolithic period; secondly, demonstrates that lineage/tribal ancestors became state deities in the Shang dynasty (c. 1600-1100 BC); and, thirdly, investigates the process in modern history by which a legendary sage, the Yellow Emperor, was first transformed into the progenitor of the Han Chinese, and then into the common ancestor of all Chinese people.