This article focuses on funerals in the case of body donation to science, which often forbids any ritual possibility in presence of the dead body and any place for a personalized memory. We show the heterogeneity of givers’ representations, as well as those of their kin and of the recipient institutions, concerning body donation, funerals and the anthropological status of the dead body. If the importance of ceremonies and places of memory is reaffirmed, this statement will have to be balanced once the first ritual initiatives and the contrasted speech of protagonists will have been assessed.