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use of BURI (for ashed) in case of cremation #309
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A cremation could also be buried. Burial is the disposition of the deceased, this can take many forms depending on custom including, scattered, at sea, inhumation, scaffolding, green, donation to science, cript, and others. |
Despite the name of the BURI structure, it is not defined to indicate burial specifically, but rather any disposal of remains. I propose we change the title of BURI from "Burial" to "Disposal of remains" and add "implies
In drafting 7.0.0 we discussed if we should add other subtypes of BURI (such as BURIAL "disposal by placement under earth or in tomb"), or remove CREM as redundant, but ended up doing neither. |
While defined to mean "the event of disposing of the mortal remains of a person who has died" since 3.0, the tag name "burial" led this to be mis-interproeted. I think this resolves #309
I agree that |
OK, but I still see genealogists want to record both the cremation event (the ceremony) and the place of the urn. |
By cremation event do you mean the information about who did the cremation? By ceremony do you mean the wake/visitation? That could be another option on the Not to diminish your thoughts in any way, but, sometimes we get really deep in the weeds on all of the possible events a person can have! I only have a few people with wake information and that always becomes a note on the BURI tag. I have several cases were the burial plot was reused at a later date, the remains were exhumed and either presented to the family or moved to a new location. This become a note in the |
I agree that we should be careful not to identify and describe each and every micro event. But the definition should be clear to everyone (programmers and genealogists) what specific events entail. And what to do with other/extra information. It's a balance between structured and unstructured data. For me as developer of a "GEDCOM publication service" it was unclear that users used the cremation event and the burial event for the place of the urn/ashes together (I assumed these were mutual exclusive). |
There are plenty of GEDCOM files that use CREM and BURI on the same person. Hence to the average English-speaking user, "cremation" is not a type of "burial". Putting an urn of ashes into a grave, or scattering ashes at sea, would be the "burial" of the ashes. And the places of cremation and burial may be completely different, i.e., different states or countries even. I did a google search on '"1 GEDC" "1 CREM"' and easily found several public GEDCOM files that used CREM and BURI on the same person, with the above meanings. Examples:
etc. |
I understand completely. I work with a lot of data "in the wild" as well, for academic reasons I'd like to know more about the data found in these two seemingly (rarely seen) mutually exclusive events. But the reality is that some people select an event/attribute just because that value is available. My goal is to create new tag where needed, but to better define old tag with As I outlined previously I can see in modern times an occasional cremation followed by an inhumation of the ashes, just like I can see; a) a cremation followed by a scattering, b) an inhumation followed by an exhumation followed by an urn storage. These can all be wrapped up in two different ways depending on how important the detail is.
I realize some software does not have a way to deal with multiple events of the same "kind" (i.e. multiple |
If you do a Google search on "Types of Burial" the term cremation is included in the list. A definition of cremation on one site I looked at was:
In some religious customs the only definition acceptable for "Burial" is the inhumation of the body, cremation is not allowed. However, I believe that GEDCOM needs to remove whenever possible a single use term that can have multiple meanings depending on the custom or tradition involved. Burial (the disposition of the deceased) can take many forms! This is why the definition has been outlined by Luther above! |
As an additional note, GEDCOM is a data transfer standard, not a data storage schema. As such the tag/field name should have little bearing on the data expected/contained in the payload, but for each payload a concise definition of the data contained in that payload must be created. This is what a good "data dictionary" does, spelling out in no uncertain words what the sender put there and what the receiver expects to find. This has been the greatest failing of past GEDCOM documents, the sometimes wishy-washy terms used and the chance for interpretation rather than setting down expectations. This is not a condemnation of GEDCOM, but a reality of the content found and passed along over the years. The point I'm making is: Applications can differentiate all they want between an inhumation or crypt disposition as a burial vs a cremation as some other term, but the We are stuck with the |
Gedcom-L discussed this issue. Summary: As summary we recommend to take the burial/cremation discussion as one example for the discussion of various events not yet implemented with a clear interpretation in the standard, and solve this together with the other events. |
When a person is cremated, sometimes urns are placed in a cemetery or ashes are scattered. This place often differs from the place of cremation (or at least the ceremony).
BURI is now defined as "Disposing of the mortal remains of a deceased person."
Information on the event (date and/or place) of placing an urn in a cemetery of the event of scattering of the ashes could be placed under the BURI tag (when looking at the BURI definition), but this feels incorrect to me as a person is either buried or cremated.
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