mass grave
Communal interment site
A mass grave is a burial site containing multiple human bodies, typically resulting from war, genocide, epidemic, or disaster.
The term carries grim connotations—mass graves suggest deaths too numerous or too politically inconvenient for individual burial.
Investigators discovered a mass grave containing victims of the massacre.
The deliberate concealment of mass graves often figures in war crimes prosecutions.
Systematic annihilation of a people
- massacreLarge-scale unlawful killing
- executionCompleting a planned task
- killingCausing death deliberately
- exterminationComplete destruction of a group
Holocaust · Rwanda · Cambodia · war crime · ethnic cleansing · pogrom · purge · persecution
Act of unearthing
- exhumationRecovering buried remains
- intermentPutting a body underground
- pitFruit's hard seed
- ossuaryReceptacle for skeletal remains
remains · skeletal · forensic · anthropologist · repatriation · identification · DNA · disinterment
genocide
Systematic annihilation of a people
- massacreLarge-scale unlawful killing
- executionCompleting a planned task
- killingCausing death deliberately
extermination · Holocaust · Rwanda · Cambodia · war crime · ethnic cleansing · pogrom · purge · persecution · violence
excavation
Act of unearthing
- exhumationRecovering buried remains
- intermentPutting a body underground
- pitFruit's hard seed
ossuary · remains · skeletal · forensic · anthropologist · repatriation · identification · DNA · disinterment · reburial
unidentified
Not yet recognized
numbered · unclaimed · faceless · forgotten · undocumented · lost · silent · hidden · erased · unrecorded
memorial
Thing preserving remembrance
- commemorationAct of honoring memory
- monumentStructure honoring someone remembered
- tributeOffering of respect
ceremony · mourning · pilgrimage · reverence · solemnity · survivors · testimony · witness · justice · recognition
- Little BighornCuster, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Sioux, Cheyenne
- gravesheadstones, tombstones, headstone, burial sites, tombstone
- death placescemetery, crematorium, crematory, funeral home, funeral parlor
- plaguesBlack Death, bubonic plague, Black Plague, plague doctor, plague mask
- Death Sitesmorgue, gallows, gas chamber, execution chamber, electric chair
- mass killingmassacre, slaughter, carnage, bloodshed, butchery
mass gravestate funeral
Official ceremony honoring deceased leader
royal tomb · memorial service · lying in state · consecrated ground · tomb of the unknown soldier
mass, grave, gravity, massive, graveyard, engrave, engraving, engraved, graves