Glossary Tombs and burial
Secondary burial
A burial in which bones are moved from where the body was first laid and reburied or rearranged, usually after the flesh had decayed.
Handling the bones of the dead is visible from the earliest villages of Cyprus. At Neolithic Shillourokambos skulls were set apart and deposited separately, and at Chalcolithic Lemba and Kissonerga the remains of infants and children were moved and reburied.
In Bronze Age chamber tombs, the bones of earlier burials were routinely pushed aside, gathered into heaps or removed as new bodies were brought in, and skulls were sometimes kept apart from the rest. This is why excavators often cannot link a skeleton to its grave goods. See mortuary practices.
Related terms
- Collective burial
The use of one tomb for many burials made over years or generations, typically by a family or kin group.
- Inhumation
Burial of an unburnt body in the ground or in a tomb, as opposed to cremation, in which the body is burnt.
- Contracted burial
A burial in which the body was laid with the knees drawn up towards the chest, usually lying on its side.