How to Slay a Vampire: The Archaeology of Identifying Restless Undead Burials

 

Figure 1: The "vampire" of Venice.  A brick was left in the mouth of the deceased.

 

Human populations around the world have been concerned with various types of monsters, blaming them for various misfortunes and ills that the living suffered with.  There are various reasons for why mythical and fictional monsters and entities were blamed: a lack of understanding of the natural world, a desire to avoid personal accountability, a means of dealing with grief, among others.  This patterns of behavior are most notably observed among European populations, who have a vast written record that can be consulted alongside the extensive archaeological evidence.  Today’s blog post will discuss how archaeologists can view and interpret specific pieces of mortuary evidence to identify the killing of the dead and the belief in reanimated corpses, which today are  known as vampires.

 

It was around AD 1000 that Europeans began to not only believe but act upon the belief that the dead (humans) could and would reanimate (return from the dead) to cause harm among the living.  This harm specifically took the form of spreading disease, primarily among living family members and close friends.  Europeans believed the dead were seeking out these individuals for comfort and to continue their lives as they had prior to death, and the spread of disease among them was so the deceased would have companionship in death.  It is more likely that these individuals spent a lot of time with the deceased before they died, and if the deceased died from a communicable disease then it is likely that the disease spread but went unnoticed due to symptoms not yet manifesting.

 

It was this trend, wherein someone died and several other family members and close friends became gravely ill and/or died, that led community members to suspect a vampire was loose.  Additional events, such as crop failures, dead livestock, or community wide misfortune, could also either reinforce this assumption or cause a vampire investigation on its own.  Immediately, it started with a suspected deceased individual being identified as the suspected vampire and their body exhumed.  If the deceased exhibited minimal decomposition or evidence of natural decomposition (e.g., rosy face, black and blue complexion, blood oozing out of their body, a plump and bloated body, recession of skin that leads to an appearance of growing hair, teeth, and nails, etc.) they would be declared a vampire and dispatched or destroyed as it was believed that would stop the unfortunate events.

 

This is where archaeologists can identify a potential vampiric burial based on the material cultural evidence that would be left behind during the “killing” of the deceased individual.  These could include evidence of a stake or object used to stake the deceased into their grave to prevent them from rising.  Alternatively, nails, pins, or thorns near or on the feet could demonstrate an attempt to prevent the dead from walking or running out of their grave.  Items, including coins, piece of pottery, brick or large stone, or wad of cotton, in or near the mouth were believed to inhibit the dead from literally consuming the living, stopping them from exiting their burial place (Figure 1).  It was common in certain areas of Europe to simply leave a sickle or knife on a body as it was believed that alone would cause bodily harm to the rising dead, disabling their ability to exit their burial.  Sometimes the living would leave bread and wine, representations of the body and blood of Christ, with the deceased as a means of providing holy sustenance to the deceased and satisfying their hunger, negating the need for them to leave their grave. 

 

When physical, material cultural evidence is missing (due to poor preservation conditions or the employment of different means of destroying the dead) there are other ways to identify a potential killing of the undead.  These include decapitation and placement of the head on the torso, legs, or feet.  Sometimes the hands and feet would be removed as a means of stopping the deceased from leaving their grade, or the heart would be removed since the heart was viewed as the lifeforce of the living and the dead.  Unfortunately, these acts can be the result of other actions, such as executions, murders, punishment for crimes (e.g., removal of the hands was a common punishment for thieves).  In cases where a body is fully skeletonized it may be difficult to determine if a heart was removed unless specific evidence is present.

 

Ultimately, if and when these pieces of evidence are discovered, particularly when multiple pieces of evidence are found together, then an archaeologist can assume that perhaps the killing of the dead occurred, leading to a conclusion that the restless dead or early vampiric burial occurred.  Again, multiple lines of evidence are required to support these conclusions since alternative conclusions can be reached (see above).  The absence of these pieces of evidence also cannot negate the occurrence of such actions against certain individuals (as preservation biases can and do occur, leading to a loss of evidence).  When such pieces of evidence are present, however, it makes a strong claim that such actions did take place, leading to a greater understanding of past belief systems and traditions.

Bibliography

Barber, P. (1988). Vampires, Burial, and Death. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Barrowclough, D. (2014). Time to Slay Vampire Burials? The Archaeological and Historical Evidence for Vampires in Europe. Cambridge: Red Dagger Press.

Betsinger, T. K., & Scott, A. (2014). Governing from the Grave: Vampire Burials and Social Order in Post-medieval Poland. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 467 - 476.

Blair, J. (2025). Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Calmet, A. (1850). The Phantom World: The Vampires of Moravia.

McCarthy, E. (2003). Death to Vampires! The Vampire Body and the Meaning of Mutilation. In C. T. Kungl, Vampires: Myths and Metaphors for Evil (pp. 73-79). Oxford: Inter-disciplinary Press.