Cemetery

A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word cemetery (from Greek κοιμητήριον ) implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground and originally applied to the Roman catacombs. The term graveyard is often used interchangeably with cemetery, but a graveyard primarily refers to a burial ground within a churchyard. The intact or cremated remains of people may be interred in a grave, commonly referred to as burial, or in a tomb, an "above-ground grave" (resembling a sarcophagus), a mausoleum, columbarium, niche, or other edifice. In Western cultures, funeral ceremonies are often observed in cemeteries. These ceremonies or rites of passage differ according to cultural practices and religious beliefs. Modern cemeteries often include crematoria, and some grounds previously used for both, continue as crematoria as a principal use long after the interment areas have been filled. Taforalt cave in Morocco is possibly the oldest known cemetery in the world. It was the resting place of at least 34 Iberomaurusian individuals, the bulk of which have been dated to 15,100 to 14,000 years ago. Grave field Neolithic cemeteries are sometimes referred to by the term "grave field". They are one of the chief sources of information on ancient and prehistoric cultures, and numerous archaeological cultures are 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 over the broad zone of European row-grave-style furnished inhumation burial, especially from the 5th to the 8th centuries CE, which comprised the regions of today's Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Low Countries, France, and south-eastern England.