The term ‘ancestor’ is used in anthropology to designate those forebears who are remembered, and to denote specific religious practices as a part of such phrases as ‘ancestor cult’ or ‘ancestor worship’.
Which forebears and in what way they are remembered varies from kinship system to kinship system. Some Amerindians, for example, seem quite uninterested in ancestors whom they have not known personally, while some Asian and African peoples may remember ancestors up to twenty ascending generations. What may be preserved and cherished may be merely the name of the ancestor, as in Chinese ancestral halls, or the physical remains of the ancestor, as among the Merina of Madagascar, or the memory of their journeys marked in the landscape, as is the case for many Aboriginal Australians. Social factors also affect which ancestors are remembered. Men may be remembered to the exclusion of women or men and women may be remembered equally. In patrilineal systems, ancestors in the male line are remembered much further back than in the female line and the reverse is true in matrilineal systems. This is because in such systems membership of a socially important group, such as a clan, may depend on the ability to demonstrate descent in the appropriate line up to a particular ancestor who may well give his or her name to the group. In hierarchical societies people of higher status usually remember ancestors better than those of lower status.
Ancestor worship is a phrase used to denote religious practices concerned with the belief that dead forebears can in some way influence the living. In his study of ancestor worship among the Tallensi of Ghana, which is very typical of ancestor worship in other parts of Africa, Fortes stresses how the worship which a patrilineal descendant should carry out reflects, though in a subtly changed way, the relationship of father and son when living (Fortes 1959). Similar observations have been made about ancient Rome by Fustel de Coulanges (1956 [1864]) and for China by Hsu (1949). In these systems the ancestors are believed to exercise a moral guardianship over their descendants and they are particularly concerned that the group of descendants do not quarrel among themselves. This guardianship, although ultimately thought of as beneficial, is double-edged since the ancestors mainly manifest themselves through the punishment of their descendants; often by sending them diseases. In such a case ancestor worship often involves appeasement in ways such as sacrifice (Middleton 1960).
The discussion of African ancestor worship has dominated anthropological theorizing on the subject, but the phenomenon is very different in different parts of the world. In contrast to Africa, where ancestors are treated with great respect, in Dobu in Melanesia people used to select specific ancestors whose jawbone they would wear round their neck, only to discard them if they did not bring good luck. In Japan and in China, ancestors are mainly worshipped in the form of ancestral tablets held in temples or ancestral halls (Smith 1974). There the concern seems to be as much a matter of honouring the dead as of separating the ancestors from the world of the living where they might cause trouble.
