Exposure introduction

"Let my carcass rot where it falls."

Lord Byron

'Burial Platform (Apsaroke)'
Edward Curtis, 1908
Exposure of the body in a tree or scaffold was common among the Native American cultures of the northern plains and prairies and the middle part of the Northwest coast. Photo courtesy of McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library

Exposure of the body to the elements or to be consumed by animals achieves skeletonisation quickly and efficiently. It is sometimes the disposal method used for executed criminals or other people who have died unnaturally. Prisoners who died while on the French penal colony of Devil's Island were thrown to the sharks each day at four o'clock. However, in many cultures it is the desired disposal method - one which is natural, efficient and which counters the waste and earthly contamination of other methods. It can also reflect the belief that the physical body is unimportant once the soul or breath of life has gone. It is often combined with other methods of disposal.

Some Indigenous Australian and Native American cultures used to expose the body on a platform or in trees for some time to decompose. Later, they would collect the bones for burial.

Tibetan Buddhists and the Zoroastrians of India and Iran feed the bodies of their dead to vultures. In areas of the Solomon Islands, bodies were left in canoes to decompose or placed on a reef to be consumed by sharks. The Masai of Kenya relied on hyenas to dispose of the dead and the Djurs of Sudan placed the body of the deceased on a termite nest so the flesh could be stripped from the bones.