Article: Exhumation

Exhumation

Cemeteries exist as "resting places," and the norm of many cultures is that the dead should not be disturbed. However, for a variety of reasons, they are disturbed through the process of exhumation (removal of a corpse from the earth). Many early groups placed the corpse in the ground and exhumed it at a later date for religious rituals, a practice still undertaken by some traditional societies. In fourteenth-century France, "it became common procedure to dig up the more or less dried-out bones in the older graves in order to make room for new ones" (Ari è s 1982, p. 54). The high death rate from the European plagues coupled with a desire to be buried in already-full ...

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