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What is the grammar of "be buried" in the following sentences?:

The graves have all been found under the houses, right under the floors. And it may be this burial custom that explains why the houses were packed in so tightly without streets. I mean, you might think it was for protection or something, but there has been no evidence found yet of any violent attack that would indicate that kind of danger. It maybe they wanted to live as near as possible to their ancestors’ graves and be buried near them themselves.

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    maybe they wanted to be buried near them. The second "infinitive marker" (to) is "deleted" because it's a "predictable" repeated element.
    – FumbleFingers
    Jan 14, 2019 at 17:09
  • Related: The ambiguous “he is buried”
    – Mari-Lou A
    Jan 14, 2019 at 17:27
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    The same grammar as in this example: I want to eat, play and be safe. A single to is shared between three different verbs.
    – Michael Rybkin
    Jan 14, 2019 at 18:33

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What may be tripping you up is a missed space: I think the last sentence should read, "It may be they wanted to live as near as possible to their ancestors’ graves and be buried near them themselves." Meaning: "The situation may be [that] they wanted to ... be buried near [their ancestors' graves] themselves." (See the second sentence starting with "And it may be...".) As it stands this sentence is ungrammatical.

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  • It is purely grammatical. "They wanted to" is common for both the clauses as " the boy wanted to kiss the girl or be kissed by the girl."
    – Barid Baran Acharya
    Jan 15, 2019 at 4:45
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An infinitive ( to- infinitive) can be made passive in the following way.

  • to+ be+ V³ of the root verb.

So people wanted to be buried near them( the ancestors) themselves.

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