Editing Aleuts (section)

===Burial practices===
They buried their dead ancestors near the village. Archeologists have found many different types of burials, dating from a variety of periods, in the Aleutian Islands. Aleuts developed burial styles that were accommodated to local conditions, and honored the dead. They have had four main types of burials: {{Lang|ale|umqan}}, cave, above-ground sarcophagi, and burials connected to communal houses.

{{Lang|ale|Umqan}} burials are the most widely known type of mortuary practice found in the Aleutian Islands. The people created burial mounds, that tend to be located on the edge of a bluff. They placed stone and earth over the mound to protect and mark it. Such mounds were first excavated by archeologists in 1972 on Southwestern Unmak Island, and dated to the early contact period. Researchers have found a prevalence of these {{Lang|ale|umqan}} burials, and concluded it is a regional mortuary practice. It may be considered a pan-Aleutian mortuary practice.<ref name="Veltre 2001"/>

Cave burials have been found throughout the eastern Aleutian Islands. The human remains are buried in shallow graves at the rear of the cave. These caves tend to be next to [[middens]] and near villages. Some [[grave goods]] have been found in the caves associated with such burials. For example, a deconstructed boat was found in a burial cave on Kanaga Island. There were no other major finds of grave goods in the vicinity.<ref name="Nelson and Barnett 1955"/>

Throughout the Aleutian Islands, gravesites have been found that are above-ground [[sarcophagi]]. These sarcophagi are left exposed, with no attempt to bury the dead in the ground. These burials tend to be isolated and limited to the remains of adult males, which may indicate a specific ritual practice. In the Near Islands, isolated graves have also been found with the remains, and not just the sarcophagus, left exposed on the surface.<ref name="Corbett 2001"/> This way of erecting sarcophagi above ground is not as common as {{Lang|ale|umqan}} and cave burials, but it is still widespread.

Another type of practice has been to bury remains in areas next to the communal houses of the settlement.<ref name="Corbett 2001"/> Human remains are abundant in such sites. They indicate a pattern of burying the dead within the main activity areas of the settlement. These burials consist of small pits adjacent to the houses and scattered around them.<ref name="Corbett 2001"/> In these instances, mass graves are common for women and children.<ref name="Corbett 2001"/> This type of mortuary practice has been mainly found in the Near Islands.

In addition to these four main types, other kinds of burials have been found in the Aleutian Islands. These more isolated examples in include [[mummification]], private burial houses, abandoned houses, etc.<ref name="Corbett 2001"/> To date, such examples are not considered to be part of a larger, unifying cultural practice. The findings discussed represent only the sites that have been excavated.

The variety of mortuary practices mostly did not include the ritual of including extensive grave goods, as has been found in other cultures. The remains so far have been mainly found with other human and faunal remains.<ref name="Corbett 2001"/> The addition of objects to "accompany" the dead is rare.<ref name="Nelson and Barnett 1955"/> Archaeologists have been trying to dissect the absence of grave goods, but their findings have been ambiguous and do not really help the academic community to understand these practices more.

Not much information is known about the ritual parts of burying the dead. Archeologists and anthropologists have not found much evidence related to burial rituals.<ref name="Veltre 2001"/> This lack of ritual evidence could hint at either no ritualized ceremony, or one that has not yet been revealed in the archaeological record. As a result, archaeologists cannot decipher the context to understand exactly why a certain type of burial was used in particular cases.