Human tower building (castells) is a two‐hundred‐year‐old traditional sport in Catalonia (Spain), which has boomed since the democratic Transition (1975) as a national symbol and low‐cost intergenerational pastime activity. In 2006, however, a child performer died as a result of a collapse. Catalonia responded with profound grief, and the human tower community embarked on a process of ‘overcoming’ (superació), whose success was made contingent on the iconic outcome of towers ritually performed throughout a year and a half. Performers produced and deployed cultural meanings of verticality, and operationalized them for bereavement and meaning making. The case inserts the iconicity of body practice in anthropological debates about death in three ways. First, the verticality and body experience of tower building allowed the bereaved community to imagine life, death, transcendence, and ‘resurrection’, thus establishing continuing bonds and a social afterlife. Second, the structural completion of towers lent itself to stage‐ and task‐oriented interpretations of bereavement, whereby each tower level was a task the community had to execute to proceed to the next stage of bereavement. However, and third, mourning through sport performance also acknowledged the uncertainties of those cultural scripts of bereavement through the performative contingencies of the outcome of tower building.

中文翻译：

---

城镇广场上的死亡：加泰罗尼亚传统运动中的身体表现和社区康复

人类塔楼（castells）是加泰罗尼亚（西班牙）的一项具有200年历史的传统运动，自1975年民主过渡以来，它作为一种国家象征和低成本的代际消遣活动而蓬勃发展。然而，在2006年，一名儿童表演者因倒塌而死亡。加泰罗尼亚深感悲痛，人类塔楼社区开始了“克服”的过程（superació），其成功取决于在一年半的时间里举行的仪式塔的标志性成果。表演者产生并运用了垂直性的文化含义，并将其运用于丧亲和意义创造。该案以三种方式在人类学有关死亡的辩论中插入了身体行为的标志性意义。首先，塔楼建造的垂直性和身体体验使丧亲者社区能够想象生命，死亡，超越和“复活”，从而建立了持续的纽带和社会来世。其次，塔楼的结构性完善使其适用于丧葬阶段和任务导向的解释，因此，每个塔级都是社区必须执行的任务，以进入丧葬的下一阶段。但是，第三，