Occasionally the body position is stretched out, however the more typical burial position is flexed or semi-flexed in a fetal position. The body can be positioned on one side, front or back, although it seems as though the side is more common.

There are several theories as to the reason for the flexed/semi-flexed body position. One theory is that the body is in the fetal position symbolizing rebirth in death. This theory seems especially reasonable with the creation myth concerning the sipapu. If humans were born from the earth and the sipapu is a representation of the hole out of which humans sprung, then it may seem reasonable to represent the return to the earth as rebirth through death. A second theory is that the body is bound flexed to deter the spirit of the dead from walking on earth. This theory makes the assumption that the Anasazi had a fear of spirits. This may be a reasonable assumption because many cultures throughout the world fear walking spirits, however one might question why the dead were buried so close to the living if wandering spirits were a worry. A third theory is that the flexed position was utilized because the body took up less space and required a smaller hole to be dug. It is possible that this was the practical reason behind a symbolic gesture, thus this theory and one of the others may be simultaneously true. The flexed position would require less work in digging the grave; in fact some of the graves that have been found were dug small enough to be a very tight fit, even with the smaller space requirement. In these situations the head is found to have been propped up on the wall of the grave, and in one case an extension was dug in order to accommodate the corpse’s legs (Anderson, 1997: 31).

Burial places can be found in a wide variety of areas. The most common area to find burials is in rooms within the complex. Burials have also been found in storage pits, kivas, trash middens, slab-lined cists (especially Basketmaker II groups) and outside of the village in plots of land much like our own cemeteries. It is believed that the rooms and storage pits used for burials were not being used as living space in the time just before or anytime after the burial, unless the body was moved.