1.
Burial vault (enclosure)
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A burial vault is a container, formerly made of wood or brick but more often today made of concrete, that encloses a coffin to help prevent a grave from sinking. The burial vault or burial liner is designed to prevent the weight of earth or heavy cemetery maintenance equipment from collapsing the coffin beneath, coffin collapse will cause the ground to sink and settle, marring the appearance of the cemetery and making it harder to maintain. Burial vaults originally emerged as a means of ensuring that grave robbers could not easily access a coffin and remove valuables, clothing, early vaults were made of wood, although by the middle of the 1800s brick, iron and later steel vaults were used. By the late 1800s, the fashion of burying the deceased with jewelry lost favor, however, the value of burial vaults in ensuring that the ground did not settle over graves was seen, and burial vaults began to be more widely used. By the early part of the 20th century, concrete became more common. Although quite commonly used in industrialized countries, the burial vault is very much a funerary item used almost exclusively in the 20th century. In the United States, the vault was largely unknown until the 1880s when the L. G. Haase Manufacturing Co. which owned a cemetery in Illinois, conceived the burial vault as a means of adding a line to their funerary sales. As late as 1915, only 5 to 10 percent of funerals in the United States used a burial vault or liner, the Haase company later purchased several plastics companies, and began manufacturing plastic burial vaults as well. The company dominates the American burial vault market today, with about 12 percent of all vault, a burial vault encloses a casket on all four sides, the top, and the bottom. Modern burial vaults are lowered into the grave, and the casket lowered into the vault, a lid is then lowered to cover the casket and seal the vault. Modern burial vaults may be made of concrete, metal, or plastic, because the sides of the burial vault are attached to the bottom of the vault, the burial vault is generally stronger than a burial liner. Some burial vaults reverse the construction, so only a base is placed beneath the coffin. The lid consists of the four sides and the top and these types of burial vaults allow a better seal between the lid and base. A burial liner is similar to a vault, but does not have a bottom. With a burial liner, the coffin is lowered directly onto the earth, the burial liner is then lowered over the casket. Modern burial liners may also be made of concrete, metal, many come in a wide array of colors, even stripes. Burial vaults do not prevent the decomposition of the remains within
2.
Coffin
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A coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation. The word took two different paths, cofin in Old French originally meaning basket, became coffin in English, a distinction is often made between coffin and casket, the latter is generally understood to denote a four-sided funerary box, while a coffin is usually six-sided. However, coffins having a side with a curve at the shoulder instead of a join are more commonly used in the United Kingdom. First attested in English in 1380, the word derives from the Old French cofin, from Latin cophinus, which means a basket. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek ko-pi-na, receptacles for cremated and cremulated human ashes are called urns. A coffin may be buried in the ground directly, placed in a vault or cremated. Alternatively it may be entombed above ground in a mausoleum, a chapel, some countries practice one form almost exclusively, whereas in others it may depend on the individual cemetery. In part of Sumatra, Indonesia, ancestors are revered and bodies were kept in coffins kept alongside the longhouses until a ritual burial could be performed. The dead are also disinterred for rituals, in northern Sulawesi, some dead were kept in above ground sarcophagi called waruga until the practice was banned by the Dutch in the 19th century. The handles and other ornaments that go on the outside of a coffin are called fittings while organising the inside of the coffin with fabric of some kind is known as trimming the coffin, cultures that practice burial have widely different styles of coffin. In Judaism, the coffin must be plain, made of wood and these coffins use wooden pegs instead of nails. All Jews are buried in the same plain cloth shroud from shoulder to knees, regardless of status in life, in China and Japan, coffins made from the scented, decay-resistant wood of cypress, sugi, thuja and incense-cedar are in high demand. Certain Aboriginal Australian groups use intricately decorated tree-bark cylinders sewn with fibre, the cylinder is packed with dried grasses. When a coffin is used to transport a person, it can also be called a pall. Coffins are traditionally made with six sides plus the top and bottom, tapered around the shoulders, another form of four-sided coffin is trapezoidal and is considered a variant of the six-sided hexagonal kind of coffin. Continental Europe at one time favoured the rectangular coffin or casket, although variations exist in size, coffins in the UK are mainly similar to the hexagonal design, but with one-piece sides, curved at the shoulder instead of having a join. In Medieval Japan, round coffins were used, which resembled barrels in shape and were made by coopers. In the case of a death at sea, there have been instances where trunks have been pressed into use as a coffin, coffins usually have handles on the side so they will be easier to carry
3.
John Steinbeck
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John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American author of 27 books, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row, the multi-generation epic East of Eden, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath is considered Steinbecks masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies, the winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been called a giant of American letters. His works are widely read abroad and many of his works are considered classics of Western literature, most of Steinbecks work is set in southern and central California, particularly in the Salinas Valley and the California Coast Ranges region. His works frequently explored the themes of fate and injustice, especially as applied to downtrodden or everyman protagonists, Steinbeck was born on February 27,1902, in Salinas, California. He was of German, English, and Irish descent, johann Adolf Großsteinbeck, Steinbecks paternal grandfather, shortened the family name to Steinbeck when he immigrated to the United States. The family farm in Heiligenhaus, Mettmann, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, is still named Großsteinbeck and his father, John Ernst Steinbeck, served as Monterey County treasurer. Johns mother, Olive Hamilton, a school teacher, shared Steinbecks passion for reading and writing. The Steinbecks were members of the Episcopal Church, although Steinbeck later became agnostic, Steinbeck lived in a small rural town, no more than a frontier settlement, set in some of the worlds most fertile land. He spent his summers working on ranches and later with migrant workers on Spreckels sugar beet farms. There he learned of the aspects of the migrant life and the darker side of human nature. He explored his surroundings, walking across local forests, fields, while working at Spreckels Sugar Company, he sometimes worked in their laboratory, which gave him time to write. He had considerable mechanical aptitude and fondness for repairing things he owned, Steinbeck graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and went on to study English Literature at Stanford University near Palo Alto, leaving, without a degree, in 1925. He travelled to New York City where he took odd jobs while trying to write, when he failed to publish his work, he returned to California and worked in 1928 as a tour guide and caretaker at Lake Tahoe, where he met Carol Henning, his first wife. They married in January 1930 in Los Angeles, where, with friends, the elder Steinbecks gave John free housing, paper for his manuscripts, and from 1928, loans that allowed him to write without looking for work. When those sources failed, Steinbeck and his wife accepted welfare, whatever food they had, they shared with their friends. Carol became the model for Mary Talbot in Steinbecks novel Cannery Row, in 1930, Steinbeck met the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, who became a close friend and mentor to Steinbeck during the following decade, teaching him a great deal about philosophy and biology. Ricketts, usually quiet, yet likable, with an inner self-sufficiency
4.
Salinas, California
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Salinas /səˈliːnəs/ is the county seat and largest municipality of Monterey County, California. Salinas is located just outside the portion of the greater Bay Area and 10 miles east-southeast of the mouth of the Salinas River. The population was 155,662 as of 2013, the city is located at the mouth of the Salinas Valley roughly eight miles from the Pacific Ocean and has a climate more influenced by the ocean than the hot-summer interior. The marine climate is ideal for the industry, grape vineyards. Salinas is known for its vibrant and large industry and as the hometown of writer and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate John Steinbeck. The land currently occupied by the city of Salinas is thought to have settled by Native Americans known as the Esselen prior to 200 AD. Between 200 and 500 AD, they were displaced by the Rumsen group of Ohlone speaking people, before this time, Monterey was the capital of California and had been under military rule after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American war. In the 1850s a junction of two main stage coach routes was located 18 miles east of Monterey and along the big bend of what is referred to as the Alisal Slough. Soon thereafter, in 1856, an inn called the Halfway House was opened at that junction in Salinas. The streets of Salinas were laid out in 1867, and the town was incorporated in 1874. The conversion of grazing land to crops and the coming of the road in 1868 to transport goods and people was a major turning point in the history. Dry farming of wheat, barley, and other grains as well as potatoes, irrigation changed farming in Salinas to mainly row crops of root vegetables, grapes and sugar beets. Many major vegetable producers placed their headquarters in Salinas, the camp opened on April 27,1942 and held a total of 3,608 people before closing two months later on July 4. Following World War II major urban and suburban development converted much farmland to city, the city experienced two particularly strong growth spurts in the 1950s and 1960s, and again in the 1990s and early 2000s. The Harden Ranch, Creekbridge and Williams Ranch neighborhoods constituting much of the citys North-East were built almost exclusively between 1990 and 2004, Salinas was also the birthplace of writer and Nobel Prize laureate John Steinbeck. The historic downtown, known as Oldtown Salinas, features much fine Victorian architecture, and is home to the National Steinbeck Center, the Steinbeck House, major development took place in the 1990s, with the construction of Creekbridge, Williams Ranch, and Harden Ranch. When annexed in 1963, Alisal was described as a large Mexican-American enclave, hispanic immigration peaked from the 1980s through the early 2000s. Mostly European-American neighborhoods in North Salinas, an expansion of the city built mostly in the 1950s and 60s
5.
Cadaver
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A cadaver, also called corpse in medical, literary, and legal usage, or when intended for dissection, is a deceased body. Observation of the stages of decomposition can help determine how long a body has been dead. The first stage is autolysis, more known as self-digestion. However, these enzymes are released into the cells because of active processes ceasing in the cells, as a result of autolysis, liquid is created that gets between the layers of skin and makes the skin peel off. During this stage, flies start to lay eggs in the openings of the body, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, open wounds, hatched larvae, of blowflies, subsequently get under the skin and start to eat the body. This bloating occurs largely in the abdomen, and sometimes in the mouth and this usually happens in about the second week of decomposition. Gas accumulation and bloating will continue until the body is decomposed sufficiently for the gas to escape and it is the last and longest stage. Putrefaction is where the structures of the body break down. The digestive organs, the brain, and lungs are the first to disintegrate, under normal conditions, the organs are unidentifiable after three weeks. The muscles can be eaten by bacteria or devoured by animals, eventually, sometimes after several years, all that remains is the skeleton. In acid-rich soils, the skeleton will eventually dissolve into its base chemicals, the rate of decomposition depends on many factors including temperature and the environment. The warmer and more humid the environment, the faster the body is broken down, greek physicians Herophilus and Erasistratus were among the first on record to have dissected bodies. Andreas Vesalius, author of De humani corporis fabrica, who was able to dispel many misconceptions by dissecting human cadavers, is regarded as the father of human anatomy. The tradition of dissecting criminals was carried up into the eighteenth and nineteenth century when anatomy schools became popular in England and Scotland, at that time, a greater percentage of Christians believed in the literal raising from the dead. Because the souls of dissected bodies could not go to heaven, criminals who were executed for their crimes were used as the first cadavers. From the 16th century until 1832, and the passage of the Anatomy Act, the demand for cadavers increased when the number of criminals being executed decreased. Since corpses were in high demand, it became commonplace to steal bodies from graves in order to keep the market supplied. The methods of preserving cadavers have changed over the last 200 years, at that time, cadavers had to be used immediately because there were no adequate methods to keep the body from quickly decaying
6.
Burial
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Burial or interment is the ritual act of placing a dead person or animal, sometimes with objects, into the ground. This is accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objects in it, humans have been burying their dead for at least 100,000 years. Burial is often seen as indicating respect for the dead, sometimes objects or grave goods are buried with the body, which may be dressed in fancy or ceremonial garb. Depending on the culture, the way the body is positioned may have great significance, the location of the burial may be determined taking into account concerns surrounding health and sanitation, religious concerns, and cultural practices. Some cultures keep the close to provide guidance to the living. Some religions consecrate special ground to bury the dead, and some families build private family cemeteries, most modern cultures document the location of graves with headstones, which may be inscribed with information and tributes to the deceased. However, some people are buried in anonymous or secret graves for various reasons, sometimes multiple bodies are buried in a single grave either by choice, due to space concerns, or in the case of mass graves as a way to deal with many bodies at once. Alternatives to burial may include cremation, burial at sea, promession, cryopreservation, some human cultures may bury the remains of beloved animals. Humans are not the species which bury their dead, the practice has been observed in chimpanzees, elephants. Evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first human species to practice burial behavior and intentionally bury their dead, doing so in shallow graves along with stone tools, exemplary sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. Some scholars, however, argue that these bodies may have been disposed of for secular reasons, the earliest undisputed human burial dates back 100,000 years. Human skeletal remains stained with red ochre were discovered in the Skhul cave at Qafzeh, a variety of grave goods were present at the site, including the mandible of a wild boar in the arms of one of the skeletons. Prehistoric cemeteries are referred to by the neutral term grave field. After death, a body will decay, Burial is not necessarily a public health requirement. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the WHO advises that only corpses carrying an infectious disease strictly require burial, human burial practices are the manifestation of the human desire to demonstrate respect for the dead. Cultures vary in their mode of respect, some reasons follow, Respect for the physical remains. If left lying on top of the ground, scavengers may eat the corpse, in Tibet, Sky burials return the remains to the cycle of life and acknowledge the body as food, a core tenet of some Buddhist practices. Burial can be seen as an attempt to bring closure to the deceaseds family, psychologists in some Western Judeo-Christian quarters, as well as the US funeral industry, claim that by interring a body away from plain view the pain of losing a loved one can be lessened
7.
Cemetery
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A cemetery or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word cemetery implies that the land is designated as a burial ground. The term graveyard is used interchangeably with cemetery, but primarily referred 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, in Western cultures, funeral ceremonies are often observed in cemeteries. These ceremonies or rites of passage according to cultural practices. Modern cemeteries often include crematoria, and some previously used for both, continue as crematoria as a principal use long after the interment areas have been filled. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a cemetery as a burial-ground generally, a large public park or ground laid out expressly for the interment of the dead, and not being the ‘yard’ of any church. Prehistoric cemeteries are referred to by the term grave field. From about the 7th century, European burial was under the control of the Church, practices varied, but in continental Europe, bodies were usually buried in a mass grave until they had decomposed. The bones were exhumed and stored in ossuaries, either along the arcaded bounding walls of the cemetery, or within the church under floor slabs. In Europe this was accompanied with a depiction of their coat of arms. Most others were buried in graveyards again divided by social status, mourners who could afford the work of a stonemason had a headstone engraved with a name, dates of birth and death and sometimes other biographical data, and set up over the place of burial. Usually, the writing and symbols carved on the headstone. Some families hired a blacksmith and had large crosses made from various metals put on the place of burial, in many European states, burial in graveyards was eventually outlawed altogether through government legislation. Instead of graveyards, completely new places of burial were established away from populated areas and outside of old towns. Many new cemeteries became municipally owned or were run by their own corporations, in some cases, skeletons were exhumed from graveyards and moved into ossuaries or catacombs. A large action of this occurred in 18th century Paris when human remains were transferred from graveyards all over the city to the Catacombs of Paris. The bones of an estimated 6 million people are to be found there, an early example of a landscape-style cemetery is Père Lachaise in Paris
8.
Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
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Media related to Graves at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Grave (burial) at Wikiquote
The dictionary definition of grave at Wiktionary
