Tending the dead marks the step from nature into culture. Burial is not a quick hiding of something shocking. It takes great labour and sacrifice to keep the dead among the living, so that a corpse stays part of the human world instead of being thrown out as carrion.
Where the dead are placed shows who counts as belonging together. A burial ground open only to members of one faith marks a closed community. A shared ground where foreigners and people of different religions lie side by side declares a new, open one, and also makes room for remembering people as individuals and family members.
People tend, guard and honour dead bodies even though they fully believe the body feels and notices nothing. The remains keep an aura no matter what our beliefs say they are worth, and no culture has ever been indifferent to them. The care comes from the living, not from the logic of the corpse.
Dead bodies remind people less of death than of the group they belong to: a family, a faith, a nation. We need the dead more than they need us, because through them the living build a shared memory that links past and future. A death tears the social fabric, and how the body is handled is how that tear gets rewoven.
Modern efforts to strip death of meaning do not end the bond between remains and memory; they find new forms for it. Cremation began as a hope of wiping away death's history, yet ashes, even of mass-murder victims, were kept and honoured. Likewise, burial without a name has come to feel deeply disturbing, so modern societies gather the names of the dead onto great lists and memorials.