Cemetery Beginnings

Burials and Customs

The first burial customs began in prehistoric times, where early humans would drop the dead into a hole and cover it with a stone. Some of the dead's possessions may have been placed with the body. Some burials during this time were accidental; if a hunter was wounded his companions would put him in a cave and seal it. If the hunter recovered, he was supposed to move the stones and climb out. Sometimes he would die in the cave, an interesting find for those who study prehistoric humans. Prehistoric humans also might purposely bury their dead in a shallow hole with a heavy stone to prevent the dead from coming back to life

Saxons, which were skilled at digging, buried their dead. The more important the person, the more dirt was piled on top of their grave. These graves were called barrows. Some of the earliest tombs were made in Egypt, China, and Rome. In Egypt, the dead were wrapped in linen and the pharaohs were buried in huge pyramids.

In the Middle ages and Victorian times, the dead were buried just around the churches. This caused many problems, however. First, these burial plots had limited space, causing the churches to sell the graves multiple times. Any number of corpses might be buried together in a hole only a few feet deep. After the bodies were stuffed into the shallow holes, plagues rose through the soil and infected most people going to mass and the children playing in the areas around the churches. Also, before burial, the valuables were often stolen off the body.

Later laws were passed making it illegal to bury bodies less than six feet under the soil, but not after thousands of people were killed from the spreading plagues. Tombstones were first used in this time, most of which depicted death and skeletons. Some time after the law was passed, body snatchers began stealing bodies from their graves to be used in medical research. These people had found a loophole in the laws, and what they did was not officially illegal.

The church yards quickly filled and the dead were buried in areas just outside the cities. As cities expanded, the cemeteries would end up in the middle of cities as an area where nature could flourish.

and They Continue....

Burials and their Rituals

By the 1830's cemeteries as we know them began to grow. While many poorer people continued to be buried in unmarked graves, there was a growth in elaborate mourning rituals and ornate tombstones. Much money and effort was often put into tombstone. This was often money well spent as several members of the one family may have been interred in a single site. The family then only needed to add in another comment on the stone itself. While many tombstones were simple reminders of the name of the person and the age when they died, others are more elaborate and often include some type of symbol that represents an element of the persons life.

The dove is another symbol often found on monuments. When the dove returned to the ark with an olive branch from the Mount of Olives in its beak, it was a sign of God's forgiveness.

Cremation is a more recent phenomena. Certainly it was not up and running in Great Britain until the 1880�. Even then and for many years after, it was seen to be the preserve of the freethinker, the consciously modern and even the weird. In the USA, the growth of cremations has also been associated with a social change; the breakdown of family and community traditions and the decline in mainstream religious affiliation.

Til the End.

Cemeteries as we know them

A wander around the cemetery can remind us of our mortality. Inscriptions can be stark reminders of the finality of death and the solemnity of the grave yet they can also provide us with a sense of peace that is in some ways a world apart from the fear that we sometimes hold of the moment of death.

While it is said that death is the great leveller, difference in rank and class are often carried though to the grave. It is interesting though that while the search for the famous may lead us to the grave yard, that search will often uncover the lives of countless others whose memories may until then have been neglected. A wander through the old cemetery, brings us stark reminders of the lives of the ordinary and of the many families who lost many children before they reached the age of 5. Disease and the lack of medical science resulted in a higher death rate of young children.