In the ancient funerary rites of New Ireland (Melanesia) a « reconfiguration of the living » occured when the preserved skull of the deceased was associated for a few hours with a wooden sculpture (malanggan) made during the ceremony and later on (then instead of later on) destroyed. The search for the meaning of this practice leads to the discovery of multiple ritual analogies between human bodies and artifacts in all the rites of the « life cycle », people being treated as sculptures and funerary sculptures as persons (where people are assimilated to sculptures, while funerary sculptures are treated as persons). From birth to death, through female and male initiation, these rites operate at key moments in the articulation of the vital spiritual principle and the human body, when the person’s relatives must contribute to making, strengthening (reinforcing) or undoing this association. As an incarnation of a supernatural presence, the funerary sculpture through which the birth and death of the person is replayed is also conceived as a mental image that temporarily materializes in a wooden body and survives its destruction by remaining in the memory of men. The reconfiguration of the human at work in the assemblage of the sculpture and the relic happened at the very moment when the reconfiguration (or reproduction) of society is ensured by the multiple transfers of material and immaterial goods carried out during funeral rites, including the copyrights of Malanggan sculptures.