This chapter explores the diverse theoretical approaches to mortuary archaeology, examining how burial practices and mortuary rituals provide insight into social structure, inequality, and cultural meaning. Beginning with processual approaches, the work of Binford, Saxe, and Goldstein highlights how burial locations and grave goods can be used to reconstruct social status and status hierarchies. Marxist interpretations, as outlined by Patterson and Lull, emphasize the role of labor, conflict, and social inequality, with funerary practices reflecting power dynamics between elites and laboring groups. These approaches argue that mortuary rituals and material culture, such as grave goods, are expressions of a community’s social relationships and economic conditions. The chapter also examines post-processual perspectives, which shift the focus toward the symbolic and ideological dimensions of mortuary practices. Post-processual scholars stress the importance of understanding death rituals within cultural and historical frameworks, where these rituals function as sites for negotiating social identity and power. The role of materiality and agency is central to this discussion, with objects seen as active agents in shaping human behavior and societal outcomes. Material culture is not merely passive but actively constructs social relations and meaning-making. Ultimately, the chapter emphasizes the importance of material culture in the reproduction and transformation of social power. By examining the ways in which objects and ritual practices shape and reinforce societal norms, archaeologists can uncover the complex processes through which power, identity, and social structures are created, negotiated, and sustained over time. The chapter concludes that the study of death and mortuary rituals, through both material culture and ethnographic perspectives, offers critical insights into the social dynamics that underlie an understanding of death.