While disposing of the dead concerns all societies, American cemeteries reflect special historical and experiential concerns. An avoidance of direct government responsibility (except in the general regulation of the marketplace) has promoted multiple, competing options for burial which are complicated by a sense of extensive land that has allowed the preservation of older cemeteries alongside new innovations. Racial, ethnic, religious and class differences also have multiplied the number and meanings of cemeteries nationwide.

American cemeteries fall into a few broad categories: family/community church/religious, government and commercial. The last dominates late twentieth/early twenty-first century practice. In rural areas, family and church/congregation graveyards may still be central, and constitute places of pilgrimage and identity for widespread descendants. By contrast, metropolitan areas present a conflicting mapping of social change in their cemeteries and individual monuments to illustrious citizens.

The oldest cities include burial grounds no longer in use but maintained as historical memorials Savannah’s colonial cemetery or the African Burial Ground in New York City NY whose discovery became a point of debate over place and presence. Nineteenthcentury park cemeteries like Mt Auburn in Boston or Laurel Grove in Philadelphia, PA are also historic sites in their landscapes and “inhabitants,” although they are also maintained and used by long-resident families (especially elites).

In addition to congregational burial grounds, Jews and Catholics have also established their own consecrated sites in many cities. In name and use these may also distinguish among different ethnic groupings as well—Italians, Irish and Poles, for example, have built different Catholic cemeteries in Northeast industrial cities.

In the South, divisions of race are common either within cemeteries or in segregated clienteles. These differences are accentuated by the economics of caste which have made white cemeteries richer and better kept. African American cemeteries have faced inadequate endowments but have incorporated distinctive cultural traditions of burial and remembrance.

Government cemeteries include military burials, which are now straining available resources after the Second World War, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans for whom such burial is a less expensive option. Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac from Washington, DC, is reserved for special memorialization, for example, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and burial of President John F. Kennedy. Battlefield cemeteries are also maintained abroad.

Municipalities face responsibilities for burial of unclaimed or impoverished deceased.

These may be contracted to commercial cemeteries or buried in a common potter’s field.

Commercial cemeteries take on many of the solemnities of earlier community-based burials, but adapt these to a profit margin—using uniform in-ground markers to facilitate mowing, promoting special-interest sections or touting advance planning and purchase plans. These are by far the most expensive options, where funerals, burial plots, markers and care cost tens of thousands of dollars. As commercial enterprises, concerns about bankruptcy or mismanagement have frequently surfaced, leading to government restrictions on operation and even takeovers. Critics also target their vulgar excess: Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One (1948; movie, 1965) pilloried the famous Forest Lawn cemetery of Los Angeles, CA, decrying its commercialization of death and art.

In the late twentieth century cremation became a more popular, cheaper option, overcoming religious and ethnic taboos. Ashes are stored in the home, religious shrines or commercial mausoleums or distributed in personally meaningful sites.

Burial has not been limited to humans alone. Pet cemeteries (and crematory facilities) complete the humanization of domestic animals amid extraordinary affluence that characterizes modern American relations with animals.