Any description of mummification in Australia and Melanesia is made more difficult by the irregularity of the evidence about funerary customs. There are two reasons for this. First, the accuracy of ethnographic reports has varied considerably, both spatially and temporally. Second, the variability and complexity of mortuary practices in these regions have continued to defy systematization. Mummification was considered to be only one component in a spectrum of cultural rituals associated with death and was practiced by relatively few tribal groups.

The most adequately documented area for this practice is the Torres Strait Islands. Ethnographic accounts for the entire region have proved exceptionally valuable sources of information about the techniques involved and the diverse motives for the preservation of the dead. In Australia, study of the corpse was instrumental in determining the suspect agent of death; by contrast, Melanesian customs were concerned more with maintaining the physical integrity of the deceased. Similarly, preservation techniques ranged from simple procedures involving natural desiccation by solar processes to more complex methods of smoke drying corpses.

A further problem has been created by vagueness in the definition of mummification and in the use of the word. Whereas accidental preservation of exposed bodies by desiccation occurred widely and randomly, purposeful preservation of bodies, or true mummification, was seldom recorded for Australia or Melanesia.

Despite these limitations, the evidence for mummification in this part of the world deserves serious attention. First, it refines our knowledge of mummification as a globally distributed custom. Second, this type of research also provides uncontaminated source material for biological assessments of indigenous populations in regions where hybridization has recently occurred.