Much like home births, home burials were once a lot more common in several cultures throughout history and across the globe. One theory for the decline is that people became less likely to bury loved ones near their dwellings as they became more likely to pull up stakes and move. Now a new study published in American Antiquity suggests that’s not the case at all. AdvertisementWhy exactly did so many cultures stop burying their loved ones at home? “For instance, they’d say that a society used to bury their dead at home, but now they use Christian cemeteries outside the settlement, or that a society used to bury their dead at home, but with the spread of Hinduism, they adopted cremation.”