Cremation Urns Composite Material

History of Cremation
This article is published by the Cremation Association of North America to provide
information and express the
views of its members. CANA members are pledged to further the high standards of
the cremation service, to
present the concept of cremation on the highest level of integrity and to emphasize
the importance of proper
memorialization.

Scholars today quite generally agree that cremation probably began in any real
sense during the early Stone
Age -- around 3000 B.C. -- and most likely in Europe and the Near East.
During the late Stone Age cremation began to spread across northern Europe, as
evidenced by particularly
informative finds of decorative pottery urns in western Russia among the Slavic
peoples.
With the advent of the Bronze Age -- 2500 to 1000 B.C. -- cremation moved into the
British Isles and into what is
now Spain and Portugal. Cemeteries for cremation developed in Hungary and
northern Italy, spreading to
northern Europe and even Ireland.
In the Mycenaean Age -- circa 1000 B.C. -- cremation became an integral part of the
elaborate Grecian burial
custom. In fact, it became the dominant mode of disposition by the time of Homer in
800 B.C. and was actually
encouraged for reasons of health and expedient burial of slain warriors in this battle-
ravaged country.

Following this Grecian trend, the early Romans probably embraced cremation some
time around 600 B.C. and
it apparently became so prevalent that an official decree had to be issued in the mid
5th Century against the
cremation of bodies within the city.
By the time of the Roman Empire -- 27 B.C. to 395 A.D. -- it was widely practiced, and
cremated remains were
generally stored in elaborate urns, often within columbarium-like buildings.
Prevalent though the practice was among the Romans, cremation was rare with the
early Christians who
considered it pagan and in the Jewish culture where traditional sepulcher entombment
was preferred.
However, by 400 A.D., as a result of Constantine's Christianization of the Empire,
earth burial had completely
replaced cremation except for rare instances of plague or war, and for the next 1,500
years remained the
accepted mode of disposition throughout Europe.
Modern cremation, as we know it, actually began only a little over a century ago, after
years of experimentation
into the development of a dependable chamber. When Professor Brunetti of Italy
finally perfected his model and
displayed it at the 1873 Vienna Exposition, the cremation movement started almost
simultaneously on both
sides of the Atlantic.
In the British Isles, the movement was fostered by Queen Victoria's surgeon, Sir Henry
Thompson. Concerned
with hazardous health conditions, Sir Henry and his colleagues founded the
Cremation Society of England in
1874. The first crematories in Europe were built in 1878 in Woking, England and
Gotha, Germany.
Meanwhile in North America, although there had been two recorded instances of
cremation before 1800, the
real start began in 1876 when Dr. Julius LeMoyne built the first crematory in
Washington, Pennsylvania.
In 1884 the second crematory opened in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and, as was true of
many of the early
crematories, it was owned and operated by a cremation society. Other forces behind
early crematory openings
were Protestant clergy who desired to reform burial practices and the medical
profession concerned with
health conditions around early cemeteries.
Crematories soon sprang up in Buffalo, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit and
Los Angeles. By 1900,
there were already 20 crematories in operation, and by the time that Dr. Hugo
Erichsen founded the Cremation
Association of America in 1913, there were 52 crematories in North America and over
10,000 cremations took
place in that year.

In 1975, the name was changed to the Cremation Association of North America to be
more indicative of the
membership composition of the United States and Canada. At that time, there were
over 425 crematories and
nearly 150,000 cremations.
In 1999, there were 1,468 crematories and 595,617 cremations, a percentage of
25.39% of all deaths in the
United States.

Published by CANA – Cremation Associaion of North America