A graveyard is an area of land where people are buried after they die. They’re usually associated with a church.
However, many cemeteries are unaffiliated with a particular religion and can be open to people of all faiths. They’re often larger because they’re not limited to a small area adjacent to a church.
Definition
A graveyard is a place where people are buried after they die. Traditionally, it would be affiliated with a church and typically only Christians are allowed to be buried in it.
A cemetery, on the other hand, is a larger burial ground that does not belong to a church and is usually more well maintained. It also tends to be more organized and neatly divided into plots, allowing for family members to have large, modern family plots.
The etymology of the word “graveyard” is interesting: It comes from a proto-Germanic word, graban, meaning “to dig.” In this case, it is referring to a shallow hole or trench dug in the ground.
A cemetery authority or corporation owns the land with a right to use it for the purposes of burial. However, that right is subject to the reasonable exercise of police power.
Origin
The word graveyard dates back to Roman times, but today it’s used to refer to a large burial ground. It is sometimes used interchangeably with cemetery, but the two words have different meanings.
Graveyards are primarily associated with churches, and many church-owned graveyards have stipulations that only Christians can be buried there. In some cases, they also require that headstones be made from granite or other natural stone.
Burials outside of church grounds became common during the fifteenth century in response to overcrowding and outbreaks of infectious disease. They also allowed for greater re-use of graves. However, re-use is complicated by the fact that family members who owned the burial plot may not be located. It is also possible that public notice of the re-use would not reach those family members, making it difficult to enforce the original burial rights. This is one of the reasons why cemetery authorities normally employ a full-time staff of caretakers who dig and maintain graves.
Meaning
A graveyard is a burial site located on church property. It is often associated with smaller rural churches, and it typically has older tombstones in a somewhat disorderly manner.
In Europe, from the 7th century onwards, burying the dead was firmly in the hands of the Church. The church had control over the entire burial process, including the lands surrounding the church that were used as part of the churchyard for burials.
As the population grew in Europe, the capacity of churchyards started to fill up and new burial sites were needed. These independent burial grounds are called cemeteries.
Variations
Generally, a cemetery is defined as an area where people are buried. However, the exact nature of the burial ground depends on a number of factors.
For example, a cemetery may be an independent building with spaces for burial, or it could be part of a church or similar property. A prison often has its own graveyard for inmates who die there without the financial means to have a traditional burial.
A cemetery is usually characterized by a rich and varied flora (Ruiter et al., 1992; Fudali, 2001). The flora is influenced by the size of the cemetery, its location in LPs or outside LPs and its usage. The flora is also affected by human activity (burials, systematic husbandry practices and introduction of ornamental species) as well as by the presence or absence of anthropophytes.