Statistics of Lithuanian cemeteries: quantity, area and geographial typology

Straipsnyje aptariamas Lietuvos kapinių skaičius ir plotas, kapinių geografinės vietos. Pirmą kartą apibendrinama Lietuvos savivaldybių informacija apie jų teritorijose esančias kapines. Visos laidojimo vietos Lietuvoje grupuojamos į penkias grupes. Aptariami šioms grupėms būdingi bruožai. Kapinės analizuojamos kaip kraštovaizdžio objektai, turintys savitus elementus ir pasižymintys įvairiais skirtumais.The geographic surveys of the Lithuanian cemeteries are just beginning. Important research topics in geography are cemetery distribution in space and features of cemetery landscape and architecture. Both ancient pre-Christian burial sites and various Christian cemeteries could be found in Lithuania. The beginning of the 19th century coincides with the history of modern cemeteries in Lithuania, when the establishment of cemeteries in the outskirts of cities was started. Researches on the quantity and area of cemeteries in Lithuania are practically non-existent due to the lack of data and the absence of the unified accounting criteria. At the beginning of the 2017, most of Lithuanian municipalities published data on the inventory of cemeteries in their territory. Based on these data, an analysis of the quantity and area of Lithuanian cemeteries was carried out. Analysis shows that a total 7835 cemeteries exist in Lithuania (March, 2017), the area of which can reach about 3830 hectares. This accounts for 38.25 sq. km, or 0.06 percent of the total country’s land area. The majority of Lithuanian cemeteries are non-functional (5 282), but the largest area is occupied by functional cemeteries (2200 ha). The largest area of the cemeteries is in major cities and surrounding municipalities. Apart from the city municipalities, the average area of the cemeteries in the municipality is 60 hectares, the number – 148. The development of modern cemeteries is determined first of all by tombstones of stone, granite or other solid materials, also by changes the area of tombstones. The demand for the columbarium is increasing; about 10 percent of dead bodies are cremated in Lithuania. On the other hand, as the history of the 20th century showed, not even stone monuments can protect cemeteries from destruction. All human burials in the Lithuanian territory can be divided into five groups: 1) The old graves (burial mounds, ancient cemeteries, etc.); 2) Cemeteries (in a churchyard and at the outskirts of a city or village; graves in a soil, in chapels, cellars, columbarium, etc.); 3) Church (graves under the floor, walls, crypts and chapels); 4) Individual graves (near roadside, in forests, etc.); 5) Mass graves (Memorials of War Victims, Memorials of the Holocaust). The geographic nature of burial is determined both by the century or family traditions and historical events. In this context, mass graves, especially those of Jewish people, are different, having the bodies of deliberately murdered people