Burial


Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objects in it, and covering it over. A funeral is a ceremony that accompanies the final disposition.
Evidence suggests that some archaic and early modern humans buried their dead. Burial is often seen as indicating respect for the dead. It has been used to prevent the odor of decay, to give family members closure and prevent them from witnessing the decomposition of their loved ones, and in many cultures it has been seen as a necessary step for the deceased to enter the afterlife or to give back to the cycle of life.
Methods of burial may be heavily ritualized and can include natural burial ; embalming or mummification; and the use of containers for the dead, such as shrouds, coffins, grave liners, and burial vaults, all of which can slow decomposition of the body. Sometimes objects or grave goods are buried with the body, which may be dressed in fancy or ceremonial garb. Depending on the culture, the manner in which the body is positioned may have great significance.
The location of the burial may be determined by taking into account concerns surrounding health and sanitation, religious concerns, and cultural practices. Some cultures keep the dead close to provide guidance to the living, while others "banish" them by locating burial grounds at a distance from inhabited areas. Some religions consecrate special ground to bury the dead, and some families build private family cemeteries.
Most modern cultures document the location of graves with headstones, which may be inscribed with information and tributes to the deceased. However, some people are buried in anonymous or secret graves for various reasons. Sometimes multiple bodies are buried in a single grave either by choice, due to space concerns, or in the case of mass graves as a way to deal with many bodies at once.
Alternatives to burial include cremation, burial at sea and cryopreservation. Some human cultures may bury the remains of beloved animals.

History

Intentional burial, particularly with grave goods, may be one of the earliest detectable forms of religious practice since, as Philip Lieberman suggests, it may signify a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life". Evidence points to the Neanderthals as the first human species known to practice burial behavior and to intentionally bury their dead; they did so using shallow graves furnished with stone tools and animal bones. Exemplary sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. Some scholars, however, argue that such "buried" bodies may have been disposed of for secular reasons.
Though there is ongoing debate regarding the reliability of the dating method, some scholars believe the earliest human burial dates back 100,000 years. Archeological expeditions have discovered human skeletal remains stained with red ochre in the Skhul cave at Qafzeh in Israel. A variety of grave goods were present at the site, including the mandible of a wild boar in the arms of one of the skeletons. The remains of a 3-year-old child at Panga ya Saidi cave in Kenya dating to 78,000 years ago also show signs suggestive of a burial, such as the digging of a pit, laying of the body in a fetal position and intentional rapid covering of the corpse.
In ancient Egypt, burial customs developed during the Predynastic period. Round graves with one pot were used in the Badarian Period, continuing the tradition of Omari and Maadi cultures.
Archeologists refer to unmarked prehistoric cemeteries using the neutral term "grave field". Grave fields are one of the chief sources of information on prehistoric cultures, and numerous archaeological cultures are labelled and defined by their burial customs, such as the Urnfield culture of the European Bronze Age.
During the Early Middle Ages, the reopening of graves and manipulation of the corpses or artifacts contained within them was a widespread phenomenon and a common part of the life course of early medieval cemeteries across Western and Central Europe. The reopening of furnished or recent burials occurred especially from the 5th to the 8th centuries CE over the broad zone of European row-grave-style furnished inhumation burial, which comprised the regions of Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Low Countries, France, and South-eastern England.
Medieval European Christianity sometimes developed complex burial rituals and attached great importance to their correct performance: the fate of the soul of the deceased might depend on observing the proper ceremonial. For example:

If you were to make it to heaven you had to be interred correctly, for burial was the passage out of this world. The body had to be shrouded in the expectation that it would be reborn into eternal life. Then, on the eve of burial, the corpse had to be taken to church on a torch-lit bier and placed in the darkness of the nave, then laid in front of the high altar, surrounded by candles. The next day, in front of the whole community, a requiem mass was to be sung and the paschal candle lit . Following this, there were prayers, hymns, special masses, and the body was borne to the grave, sprinkled with holy water and buried in consecrated ground. It must be laid head up with its feet to the east, for it was from this direction that Christ would return, from New Jerusalem, at the Apocalypse, when the worthy dead would be resurrected. If burial rituals went awry, one's immortal soul was jeopardised. Personal salvation – breaking free from the corporeal prison and ascending to a spiritual sphere unencumbered by materiality – is the logical culmination of the myth of humanity's supposed dominion over nature.
.

Reasons for human burial

After death, a body will decay. Burial is not necessarily a public health requirement. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the World Health Organization advises that only corpses carrying an infectious disease strictly require burial.
Human burial practices are the manifestation of the human desire to demonstrate "respect for the dead". Cultures vary in their mode of respect.
Some reasons follow:
  • Respect for the physical remains. If left lying on top of the ground, scavengers may eat the corpse, considered disrespectful to the deceased in many cultures. In Tibet, sky burials deliberately encourage scavenging of human remains in the interest of returning them to nature, just as within Zoroastrianism, where burial and cremation were often seen as impure.
  • Burial can be seen as an attempt to bring closure to the deceased's family and friends. Psychologists in some Western Judeo-Christian quarters, as well as the US funeral industry, claim that by interring a body away from plain view the pain of losing a loved one can be lessened.
  • Many cultures believe in an afterlife. Burial is sometimes believed to be a necessary step for an individual to reach the afterlife.
  • Many religions prescribe a particular way to live, which includes customs relating to disposal of the dead.
  • A decomposing body releases unpleasant gases related to decomposition. As such, burial is seen as a means of preventing smells from expanding into open air.

    Burial methods

In many cultures, human corpses were usually buried in soil. The roots of burial as a practice reach back into the Middle Palaeolithic and coincide with the appearance of Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, in Europe and Africa respectively. As a result, burial grounds are found throughout the world. Through time, mounds of earth, temples, and caverns were used to store the dead bodies of ancestors. In modern times, the custom of burying dead people below ground, with a stone marker to indicate the burial place, is used in most cultures; although other means such as cremation are becoming more popular in the West.
Some burial practices are heavily ritualized; others are simply practical.

Burial depth

It is a common misconception that graves must be dug to a depth of six feet. This is reflected in the common euphemism for death of six feet under. In fact, graves are rarely dug to this depth except when it is intended to later bury a further coffin or coffins on top of the first one. In such cases, more than six feet may be dug, to provide the required depth of soil above the top coffin.
In the United States, there is no nationwide regulation of burial depth. Each local authority is free to determine its own rules. Requirements for depth can vary according to soil type and by method of burial. California, for instance, requires only 19 inches of soil above the top of the coffin, but more commonly 30 to 36 inches are required in other places. In some areas, such as central Appalachia, graves were indeed once dug to a depth of six feet to prevent the body being disturbed by burrowing animals. However, this was unnecessary once metal caskets and concrete vaults started to be used.
In the United Kingdom, soil is required to be to a depth of three feet above the highest point of the coffin, unless the burial authority consider the soil to be suitable for a depth of only two feet.
The earliest known reference to a requirement for a six-foot burial occurred in 1665 during the Great Plague of London. John Lawrence, the Lord Mayor of London, ordered that the bodies of plague victims "...shall be at least six foot deep." The city officials apparently believed this would inhibit the spread of the disease, not realising that the true vector was fleas living on rats in the streets. In the event, there were so many victims that very few were buried in individual graves. Most were placed in massive plague pits so it is unlikely that this event alone gave rise to the "six feet" tradition.