Roland Hardenberg is Head of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Tuebingen, Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin with a thesis dealing with the renewal (nabakalebara) of the deities of the Jagannatha temple. His post-doctoral thesis was entitled ‘Children of the Orissa Goddess: Society, Sacrifice and Marriage in the Highlands of Orissa'. Presently, he is working on a research project dealing with funeral sites and practices in post-socialist Kyrgyzstan.