There are many ways that human bodies have been disposed of, in ways that range from reverent to expedient. Practices relating to the disposal of corpses vary widely depending on culture, religion, and jurisdiction.

The problem of body disposal has two parts: disposal of the soft tissues, which will rapidly decompose, and of the skeleton, which will remain intact for thousands of years under the right conditions.

In most cultures, before the onset of significant decay, the body undergoes some type of ritual disposal, usually either cremation or deposition in a tomb that is often a hole in the ground called a grave, but may also be a sarcophagus, crypt, sepulchre, or ossuary, a mound or barrow, or a monumental surface structure such as a mausoleum (exemplified by the Taj Mahal). The body can be inhumated, cremated or embalmed then either burried, stored in mausoleum, scattered or destroyed.  

In Tibet, one method of corpse disposal is sky burial, which involves placing the body of the deceased on high ground (a mountain) and leaving it for birds of prey to dispose of. Sometimes this is because in some religious views, birds of prey are carriers of the soul to the heavens, but at other times this simply reflects the fact that when terrain (as in Tibet) makes the ground too hard to dig, there are few trees around to burn and the local religion (Buddhism) believes that the body after death is only an empty shell, there are more practical ways of disposing of a body, such as leaving it for animals to consume. 

In certain cultures, efforts are made to retard the decay processes before burial (resulting even in the retardation of decay processes after the burial), as in mummification or embalming. This happens during or after a funeral ceremony. Many funeral customs exist in different cultures. In some fishing or navy communities, the body is sent into the water, in what is known as burial at sea. Several mountain villages have a tradition of hanging the coffin in woods. 

A new alternative is ecological burial. This is a sequence of deep-freezing, pulverisation by vibration, freeze-drying, removing metals, and burying the resulting powder, which has 30% of the body mass. 

Space burial uses a rocket to launch the cremated remains of a body into orbit. This has been done at least 150 times.