Glossary Tombs and burial
Inhumation
Burial of an unburnt body in the ground or in a tomb, as opposed to cremation, in which the body is burnt.
Inhumation was the usual treatment of the dead in Cyprus from the Neolithic to the Roman period. Reports speak of single or multiple inhumations, and of primary ones, where the body still lies as it was first placed. Cremation was rare on the island and appears mainly in a small number of elite burials of the Iron Age, where burnt bones were placed in a bronze vessel. See Neolithic and Chalcolithic burial for the earliest graves.
Related terms
- Contracted burial
A burial in which the body was laid with the knees drawn up towards the chest, usually lying on its side.
- 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.
- Pit grave
A simple grave dug as a hole in the ground, usually for one body; the normal form of burial in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Cyprus.