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Article: Cemeteries and Cemetery Reform
- Article from:
- Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cemeteries and Cemetery Reform
When death strikes in society certain events and rituals must be undertaken. The decaying of the corpse and beliefs about death make the presence of the dead person among the living unacceptable. Throughout history almost all societies have employed different practices for disposing of and commemorating the dead. One such form is the cemetery.
The term
cemetery
derives from the Greek (
koimeterion
) and Latin (
coemeterium
) words for "sleeping place." The concept is closely related to
burial ground, graveyard, churchyard,
and
necropolis,
which is Greek for "city of the dead." The boundary between these designations is not clear-cut. A burial ground and a ...