Humans are not the only species to bury their dead. Chimpanzees and elephants are known to throw leaves and 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 Statesconstruction companies have run into conflict with Native American groups that wanted to preserve their ancient burial grounds from any form of modern construction.
In folklore and mythology, exhumation has also been frequently associated with the performance of rites to banish undead manifestations. An example is the Mercy Brown Vampire Incident of Rhode Island, which occurred in 1892.
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.
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.
Inhumation was the dominant rite in the Illyrian territory proper (the littoral and its immediate hinterland) and it was used in combination with cremation (biritualism) by the Celtic populations in Pannonia and in the Danubian valley, especially in the earlier phases of their presence in this territory.
Inhumation was the dominant rite also among the Celtic populations in Pannonia in the earlier phases of their presence in that region (from the end of the 4th century B.C. to the beginning of the 2nd century B.C.).
Inhumation becomes the dominant rite in the middle of the 3rd century A.D. In the province of Macedonia cremation is sporadically practised until the middle of the 4th century A.D. (Stobi, coin of Constantius II; Pesterica, coin of Julianus).
Inhumation was one more symbol to be used by the elite in positioning themselves within imperial culture.
The change-over from cremation to inhumation was almost certainly a matter of competitive emulation, with the elite jumping to copy the emperors, and the rest of the population following suit within a couple of generations.
The spread of inhumation practices united the eastern and western halves of the empire in terms of ritual.
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