Unusual funerary behaviour is now an exciting area of research in Central and Western European archaeology. In Poland, since the first half of the twentieth century, finds of atypical or deviant burials have been almost exclusively interpreted as evidence for so-called 'anti-vampire' practices, intended to prevent the dead from rising, haunting and hurting the living. In the last decade or so, new attempts have been made, especially in the UK, to develop more sophisticated understandings of deviant burials, and to perceive them not only in the context of popular superstition, but also with regard to judicial practices. Inspired by these new developments, this paper offers a range of new interpretations of deviant burials from early medieval Poland with a focus on burials where people were buried in a prone position, decapitated or covered with stones.
This paper examines the notion of infant and child burials in early and late medieval Poland which differed significantly from the normative funerary behaviour. Particular attention is devoted to the so-called 'atypical' or 'deviant' inhumation graves that contained allegedly apotropaic objects or stones placed directly on the deceased as well as the peculiar burials of infants in ceramic vessels. In addition to discussing archaeological materials, the authors also examine historical sources and folkloristic evidence for unusual and magic practices associated with newborns in the Middle Ages.
KeywordsInfants; children; revenants; deviant burials; burials in vessels; apotropaic practices.Note: When the above article was first published online, some words were misspelt in the caption to Figure 3. This has now been corrected in both the print and online versions of the article. For more details, see Erratum http://dx.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.