| Summary: | Many of the rites described by Ibn Faḍlān in his account of a Rūs funeral remain obscure. Rather than attempting to further puzzle out the symbolic content of these funerary practices, this article uses signalling theory to examine their role in group dynamics. Signalling theory examines the honesty of communications between individuals, focusing especially on how costly acts can represent the fitness and cooperative qualities of the communicator. Applying this theory to Ibn Faḍlān's descriptions can help elucidate the funeral's impact on in‐group and out‐group observers, the transmission of associated counter‐intuitive beliefs and, more broadly, group fitness and prosociality.
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