Inhumation

soil that was dug out of it.

Objects are sometimes buried in order to hide them against removal or tampering. For cables and pipelines, burial provides protection and allows the convenience of walking or driving over them.

People are often buried after they die, for a variety of reasons. The rest of this article discusses human burial.

Reasons for human burial

To maintain hygiene, corpses must not be in open air around the living. Decomposing bodies are laden with bacteria. These bacteria aid in the decomposition process, but many of them are harmful to the living.

Rotting corpses emit unpleasant odors (due to gasses released by decomposing bacteria) and look gruesome. Burial prevents the living from having to see and smell the corpses.

Many cultures insist on closure to the deceased's companions. By intering a body away from plain view, the pain of losing a loved one to death can likewise be lessened.

• Many cultures believe in an afterlife. Burial is often believed to be a necessary step for an individual to reach the afterlife.

Burial practices

In many human cultures throughout history, human corpses were usually buried in soil. Burial grounds have been uncovered all over the world. Mounds of earth, temples, and underground 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 mark the place is used in almost every culture.

Different cultures bury their dead in different ways. Some of these practices are heavily ritualized; others are simply practical.

Prevention of decay

Embalming is the practice of preserving a body against decay, and is used in many cultures. Mummification is a form of embalming that is often more extensive, further retarding the decay process.

Bodies are often buried wrapped in a shroud or placed in a coffin (also called a casket). A larger container may be used, such as a ship. Coffins are usually covered by a burial liner or a burial vault, which protects the coffin from collapsing under the weight of the earth.

These containers slow the decomposition process by (partially) physically blocking decomposing bacteria and other organisms from accessing the corpse. An additional benefit of using containers to hold the body is that if the soil covering the corpse is washed away by a flood or some other natural process, the corpse will still not be exposed to open air. This is a great help to maintaining hygiene.

Inclusion of clothing and personal effects

The body may be dressed in fancy and/or ceremonial clothes. Personal objects, such as a favorite piece of jewelery or photograph, of the deceased may be included with the body. This practice, also known as the inclusion of grave goods, serves several purposes:

• In funeral services, the body is often put on display. Many cultures feel that the deceased should be presented looking his/her finest.
• The inclusion of ceremonial garb and sacred objects is sometimes viewed as necessary for getting to the afterlife.
• Future archaeologists may find the remains. Artifacts such as clothing and objects provide insight into how the individual lived. This provides a form of immortality for the deceased.

Body positioning

Burials may be placed in a number of different positions. Christian burials are made extended, i.e., lying flat with arms and legs straight, or with the arms folded upon the chest, and with the eyes and mouth closed. Extended burials may be supine (lying on the back) or prone (lying on the front). Other ritual practices place the body in a flexed position with the legs bent or crouched with the legs folded up to the chest. Many cultures treat placement of dead people in an appropriate position to be a sign of respect even when burial is impossible.

In nonstandard burial practices, such as mass burial and gibbeting, the body may be positioned arbitrarily. This is a sign of disrespect to the deceased, or at least nonchalance on the part of the inhumer.

Marking the location of the burial

Most modern cultures mark the location of the body with a headstone. This serves two purposes. First, the grave will not accidentally be exhumed. Second, headstones often contain information or tributes to deceased. This is a form of remembrance for loved ones; it can also be viewed as a form of immortality, especially in cases of famous people's graves.

Multiple bodies per grave

Some couples or groups of people want to be buried together, for example, a husband and wife. Since (in many cases) people die at different times, the exhumation of the first to die is often necessary. In other cases, the bodies may simply be buried side by side.

Mass burial is the practice of burying dozens, hundreds, or thousands of individuals in one massive pit, much like a landfill for human remains. Most cultures view mass burial as a way of objectifying corpses, and is often viewed as a form of gross disrespect to the individuals being buried. Civilizations attempting genocide often employ mass burial for the people they kill in the genocide, as it coincides neatly with their goals of dehumanizing and destroying a segment of the population.

However, in some cases, mass burial is the only practical means of dealing with a number of corpses sufficient to overwhelm local resources, as in a disaster.

In cases of mass burial, it is commonly of importance to survivors to later have the bodies exhumed, identified, and buried properly.

Live burial

Live burial sometimes occurs, in which individuals are buried while still alive. Having no way of escaping interment, they die in place, typically by asphyxiation, dehydration,starvation, or (in cold climates) exposure. People may come to be buried alive in a number of different ways:

• An individual may be intentionally buried alive as a method of execution or murder.
• In Ancient Egypt, servants were sometimes intentionally buried alive with their Pharaoh in order to serve him/her in the afterlife.
• A person or group of people in a cave, mine, or other underground area may be sealed underground due to an earthquake or other natural disaster.
• People have been unintentionally buried alive because they were pronounced dead by a coroner or other official, when they were in fact still alive. Scratch marks have been found on the inside of coffins, attesting to the fact that unintentional live burials do occasionally occur in cases where the body has not been embalmed.

Burial of animals

By humans

In addition to burying human remains, many human cultures also regularly bury animal remains. This is often necessary for hygienic reasons when the body cannot be disposed of in another way.

Pets and other animals of emotional significance are often ceremonially buried. The Ancient Egyptians are known to have mummified and buried cats, which they considered deities.

By other animals

Humans are not the only species to bury their dead. Chimpanzees are known to throw branches over fallen members of their family groups.

Exhumation

The digging up of a buried body is called exhumation, and is considered sacrilege by most cultures that bury their dead. However, there is often a number of circumstances in which exhumation is tolerated:

• If an individual died under suspicious circumstances, a legitimate investigating agency (such as a police agency) may exhume the body to determine the cause of death.
• A body may be exhumed so that it may be reburied elsewhere.
• Once human remains reach a certain age, many cultures consider the remains to have no communal provenance, making exhumation acceptable. This serves several purposes:
  • Many cemeteries have a limited number of plots in which to bury the dead. Once all plots are full, older remains are typically moved to an ossuary to accommodate more bodies.
  • It enables archaeologists to search for human remains in order to better understand human culture.
  • It enables construction agencies to clear the way for new infrastructure.

Frequently, cultures have different sets of exhumation taboos. Occasionally these differences result in conflict, especially in cases where a culture with more lenient exhumation rules wishes to operate on the territory of a stricter culture. For example, United States construction companies have run into conflict with Native American groups that wanted to preserve their ancient burial grounds from any form of modern construction.

Alternatives to burial

Not all cultures bury their dead, and many of those that do bury their dead do not do so in all cases. Alternatives include:

• Burial at sea is the practice of depositing the body an ocean or other large body of water instead of soil.
• Cannibalism is the practice of eating the remains.
• Cremation is the incineration of the remains.
• Cryopreservation is the cold storage of the remains.
• Ecological funeral is a proposed method of increasing the rate of decomposition in order to help fertilize the soil.
• Excarnation is the practice of removing the flesh from the corpse without interment.
  • Butchering the corpse by hand to remove the flesh.
  • Sky burial involves placing the body on a mountaintop.
  • Gibbeting is the practice of publicly displaying remains of criminals to deter others from becoming criminals.
• Space burial is the practice of firing the coffin into space. The coffin may be placed into orbit, sent off into interstellar space, or incinerated in the sun. Space burial is still largely in the realm of science fiction as the cost of getting a body up into space is currently prohibitively large.

In most cases, these alternatives still maintain respect for the dead. In fact, some of the more elaborate alternatives are employed by some cultures to show increased respect for the deceased. Gibbeting is a notable exception, showing a complete lack of respect.

See also

• Burial mound
• Coffin
• Funeral
• Headstone