Ossuary

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An ossuary is a chest, building, well or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains.

In Persia the Zoroastrians used a deep well for this function from the earliest times (c. 3,000 years ago) and called it astudan (literally, "the place for the bones"). There are many rituals and regulations in the Zoroastrian faith concerning the astudans. The Iranian Aryans in the region of central-Asia called an ossuary tanbar and used them from very ancient times.

In first-century Judaism, when space for burials was scarce, the use of ossuaries became common because of limited space for tombs; once a body had become skeletonised, the bones were collected and placed in an ossuary. The ossuary of the high priest Caiaphas has been discovered from these times.

In 2002, an ossuary allegedly belonging to James the Just, the brother of Jesus was brought to public attention; its authenticity is uncertain (according to the article on James the Just, it was shown to be a modern forgery in a report published in June 2003, and the forger was arrested).

In Europe, limited cemetery space or other unusual needs in some areas again led to the reuse of burial plots and the recovery of human remains to be stored in ossuaries. One celebrated such site is the Sedlec ossuary in the Czech Republic.