Pyres in the ground?

[agdhani]

I'm trying to determine the logistics (if it is even possible) for an ancient culture to burn a body within a hole in the ground. As I understand it, ancient pyres/cremation left more of the body afterwards then modern cremation techniques provide. Given my fictional culture's issues with death (and the taboos around it) I'm already have them

Comments

[agdhani]

Awesome, thanks. It did seem logical that limited air flow would be a problem, so I've also been looking at substances with which to treat the body that might make burning faster/more likely/more complete...resins, oil-soaked cloth and the like but have yet to decide what, if any, substance would be practical. Erecting the pyre so that it is above the ground enough for airflow and allowing ash to fall into the pit helps salve those issues.

unfortunately...

[turbobeholder]

the answer is "LOTS of fuel" either way, especially given that those remnants are mostly water.
And yes, without wasting excessive amount of good fuel just to make fire hotter (and updraft stronger, too) - as practiced in India to this time - even in best-case scenario the smell must be masked with lots of incenses and the whole thing is still... uh... "not pretty".

[lilacsigil]

WARNING FOR DISTURBING CONTENT

The Nazis did a lot of research on this because they were killing Jewish people so fast that the furnaces couldn't keep up. They used alternating stacked wooden logs around the edge of the pit so that air could circulate, filled it with bodies (and occasionally living people), lit the fire then covered it once the bodies were well alight and their fat was burning. This was only used for mass cremation - a minimum of 42 people but usually more like 900 at a time, because otherwise there wasn't enough fuel in the form of logs and human fat for the bones to burn.

[agdhani]

I'd forgotten about the Nazis doing this outside of the crematorium, so thanks for the reminder. I'll see where this info leads my research.

[hawklady]

Seconding and thirding what others have said about buried fires vs open-pit type things. I do a great deal of low-and-slow BBQ grilling, using pit-style techniques and a ceramic grill

[agdhani]

Thanks for these details...this was kinda what I was thinking, but the details have been hard to find.

[anonymous]

If your goal is an "out of sight, out of mind" approach to human remains or your fictional culture has taboos about touching the bones and ashes, have you considered sky burials instead of cremation? (I can't give you a link here, so just google "sky burial".)

[agdhani]

That's really interesting! I just might have a use for some version of that, so thank you!

[anonymous]

The practice of burning a body where it is to be buried (as opposed to burning it elsewhere before interring it) is known as 'primary cremation' amongst archeologists. It is significantly more resource-intensive than secondary cremation, because you need much more wood, and a way to ensure that there's enough airflow in your grave that the fire will burn hot enough that you incinerate, rather than merely cook, your body.

Primary cremation was the most common form of burial in the proto-Attic period of Late Archaic/Early Classical Greece (~725-625BC), though it had been practiced for about a century before that. So it is entirely possible for your fictional culture to do the same from a very low level of technological development.

Remember, though, that ancient cremation was never as thorough as modern industrial cremation is, and there would have been left-over bone fragments in the cremation pit.

[agdhani]

Thanks for the info.
Having bone fragments is okay; they just don't want a 'body' for the spirit to come back to (to allow them to haunt the living). I considered dismemberment, but it doesn't feel like an appropriate thing given the rest of the culture's views and attitudes.