What they throw people and sometimes pets into for burial purposes. Hideously expensive, coffins are intended to preserve a body along with the stuff that the undertaker puts in it. Really doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you consider that the bodies in coffins are usually stone dead, so the bodies don't care if they're preserved. People can't see into a coffin anyways, so why bother? Just toss me in a hole in the ground when I croak.