What Is the Difference Between a Cemetery and a Graveyard?
The terms cemetery and graveyard seem interchangeable, but they’re really not. What are the subtle variations? Let’s explore why cemeteries and graveyards differ.
What Is a Graveyard?
A graveyard usually refers to a small area next to a church where people are buried. Back in the Middle Ages in Europe, the fanciest congregants were buried under the church while the poorer members were interred outside. These outside burials were clustered into areas known as graveyards.
Since churches were a central feature of many towns for centuries, graveyards are often closer to city centers than modern cemeteries. Most of the time, they exist on land owned by their affiliated church. The graves are scattered around as there was never a master plan for burials. Instead, the plots spread organically.
What Is a Cemetery?
A cemetery is a modern allotment of land put aside for the burial of the dead. These pieces of land are usually larger than graveyards, and they are often found far away from dense human habitation so that the land maintains a low usage priority. While most modern cemeteries aren’t necessarily secular, these pieces of land aren’t usually associated with a specific physical place of worship.
Cemeteries tend to be large and well organized with burial plots ready to receive remains decades before the space is actually needed. There is a defined uniformity in most cemeteries including developed infrastructure to support aesthetics, visitors, and staff.
What Is the Difference Between a Cemetery and a Graveyard?
Graveyards are usually on consecrated church grounds while cemeteries are almost always commercially owned or managed by a city. Even if a church owns a cemetery, it runs the cemetery as a separate business from the church itself. Most cemeteries have accessible burial spots for those who can afford it while graveyards usually serve a specific group of people that belong to the attached religious community.
Cemeteries are more organized than graveyards because they were planned on purpose while graveyards developed organically over time. Since church graveyards existed before today’s cemeteries, the oldest marked graves in a specific region tend to be in graveyards — though this isn’t always the case.
Are Graveyards and Cemeteries Burial Grounds?
Yes, both cemeteries and graveyards are considered burial grounds. A burial ground is an umbrella term that refers to any chunk of land that is purposefully designated as a place for interment. The term burial ground implies any location put aside for burials and includes sites outside of the Western notion of cemeteries and graveyards.
