The mortuary record of the Mesolithic of Europe presents a significant variability in the treatment of the body. While the most well-known burials are inhumations, often from large formal disposal areas, or cemeteries, many other ways of treating the dead body occurred, including cremation, manipulation, exposure to the elements, submersion in water, and even mummification. This chapter presents this range of treatment in these hunter- gatherer communities with an approach that centreers archaeological method and theory with a focus on the ritualized handling of the dead body as a fundamental aspect of the mortuary ritual as a rite of passage. The chapter proposes that, by analysing the ways in which the dead body was treated, we can glean insight into the hunter- gatherer cosmology in which they were an integral part, and the place that death and the dead held within it. This is accomplished by discussing aspects such as the maintenance and dissolution of the individual human body, the framing of different kinds of bodies (human and animal), the significance of place for the dead and the living, and by analysing transformation and violence against the cadaver.