Emplacing the Dead, Sustaining the Lineage: Semiotic Resources in Nandi Mortuary Practice

Abstract

This study examines how spatial, temporal, material, and embodied semiotic resources construct meanings around death, burial and lineage continuity among the Nandi of Kenya. The signs used in Nandi mortuary practice have been documented and their meanings recorded, but what they accomplish, and how they work upon one another across the days between a death and its completion, has not been examined. The study employs a qualitative secondary-analysis design, re-examining the mortuary material documented in Chemis (2020) and summarised in Chemis et al. (2020), whose data were generated through semi-structured interviews with twelve Nandi speakers and participant observation at funerals in Megun Ward, Uasin Gishu County. Eight categories of resources were analysed through social semiotics and multimodality, supported by rites-of-passage theory. The placement of the body within the house and of the grave within the homestead inscribes the deceased’s position in the domestic and kinship order into the compound itself; temporal resources regulate the passage from death to interment, and certain deaths are excluded from the standard timing; and material and embodied resources communicate that the relationship with the deceased continues rather than ends. The study concludes that Nandi mortuary resources do not terminate that relationship but relocate it spatially, temporally and socially. Its significance lies in showing that documented signs operate as a coordinated system; comparative work across Kalenjin communities is recommended.