Charnel house

A charnel house is a vault or building where corpses and/or bones are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves. The term can also be used more generally as a description of a place filled with death and destruction.

A Charnel House is also a structure commonly seen in some Native American societies of the Eastern United States. Major examples would be the Hopewell cultures and Mississippian cultures. These houses were used specifically for mortuary services and although they were much more expensive to build and maintain than a crypt, were very popular. They offered privacy and shelter as well as enough workspace for mortuary proceedings. These precedings included cremation (in the included crematorium) as well as defleshing of the body before the cremation. Once the houses had served their purpose they were burned to the ground only to be covered by earth creating a sort of burial mound.

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)