In the Global North, death is often treated as the departure of a person. However, across Africa, families and communities often include living and dead members, usually called “ancestors.” In this article, we use archaeology to support educators in communicating key aspects of deathways and the study of ancestors in Africa. We do this through an example drawn from the ancient kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia (50–800 CE). Archaeologist Dilpreet Singh Basanti previously analyzed human remains from Aksum and reconstructed an ancient community’s burial and ongoing engagement with a young woman. Artist Naomi Mekonen has created a surrealist lens to present this woman’s story of death in this article’s figures. Surrealism is a rising perspective in modern art from the Tigray region and is used here to shift the tone from death as a grim tale of loss to death as a love story. We show how ongoing actions around the young woman’s tomb relate to her continued role in her family and community. Our example illustrates that ancestors are elements of healthy community life. Ancestors provide a guiding voice that helps to define people’s values and experiences of the world. In this way, ancestors are inseparable from “culture,” and exploring these themes helps us to appreciate the role of culture as a guiding way that connects generations of loved ones, living and dead.

在北半球国家，死亡通常被视为一个人的离开。然而，在整个非洲，家庭和社区通常包括活着的和死去的成员，通常被称为“祖先”。在本文中，我们利用考古学来支持教育工作者传达死亡方式的关键方面以及对非洲祖先的研究。我们通过取自埃塞俄比亚古代阿克苏姆王国（公元 50-800 年）的一个例子来做到这一点。考古学家迪尔普雷特·辛格·巴桑蒂（Dilpreet Singh Basanti）此前分析了阿克苏姆的人类遗骸，并重建了一个古代社区的墓葬以及与一名年轻女子持续交往的情况。艺术家 Naomi Mekonen 创造了一个超现实主义镜头，在本文的人物中展示了这个女人的死亡故事。超现实主义是提格雷地区现代艺术中一种新兴的观点，在这里被用来改变死亡的基调，将死亡作为一个关于失去死亡的残酷故事作为一个爱情故事。我们展示了围绕这位年轻女子坟墓开展的持续行动与她在家庭和社区中持续发挥的作用有何关系。我们的例子说明祖先是健康社区生活的要素。祖先提供了指导性的声音，有助于定义人们的价值观和世界经验。这样，祖先就与“文化”密不可分，探索这些主题有助于我们认识到文化作为连接几代亲人（无论是生者还是死者）的引导方式的作用。