For most people, cemeteries are somber places of mourning. For archeologists, however, they are a window into the lives and traditions of the past.
Archaeologists have spent years carefully excavating a 1,550-year-old child cemetery in Italy in order to get a better understand of what life and the people from the mid-fifth century were like. Recently, however, archeologists noticed something unusual about a child that had been laid to rest at the site.
La Necropoli dei Bambini
Over the years, archeologists have been excavating an area is the commune of Lugnano in Teverina, which is 60 miles north of Rome in the Italian region of Umbria. Archeologists have been drawn to the area, which is home to the La Necropoli dei Bambini, or the “Cemetery of Babies.”
A Window to The Past
For most people, a baby cemetery would be a sad and somber place. But in an archaeologist’s eyes, the cemetery is a window to the past. According to archaeologists at the University of Arizona, who have led excavations at the site over the years, the cemetery is from the mid-fifth century.
A Breeding Ground
Around the time, the area was hit with a deadly malaria outbreak. The outbreak was a result of contaminated food and water that was common in the Roman Empire. No one at the time realized, but the swamps in the area were a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.
The Disease Spreads
As a result, mosquitoes carrying malaria spread quickly throughout the region. Small children and babies were particularly vulnerable since their immune systems were too weak to fight off the disease. Sadly, many small children and babies were killed in the outbreak. At the time, the people in the area decided to create a burial area for the children, which would become the La Necropoli dei Bambini. Before that point, the land was the site of an abandoned Roman villa that had been built at the end of the first century B.C.
A Final Resting Place
The young victims of the malaria outbreak were laid to rest in the cemetery, where they would remain undisturbed for hundreds of years. But in 1987, David Soren, an archeologist from the University of Arizona, arrived at the site. He and his team began excavations to see what insight they could get into life during the mid-fifth century.
The Excavations Begins
Since 1987, excavations led by Soren have continued at the site. During those years, more than 50 burials were unearthed. Based on their findings, archeologists believed that the cemetery was only for stillborn babies, infants, and toddlers. The eldest remains they found belonged to a 3-year-old girl.
The Center of Witchcraft
During the Roman Empire, the region of Umbria was the center of witchcraft. At the time, people relied on superstitions and rituals to explain and cope with things they could not understand, like disease and tragedy. According to Soren, he and his team have found ample evidence of those superstitions.
Evidence of Burial Rituals
In total, Soren and his team have excavated dozens of graves. In many of those graves, the bodies of babies and small children have been buried with raven talons, toad bones, bronze cauldrons filled with ash, and sacrificial puppies. Each of those objects has been associated with magic and witchcraft.
A Fascinating Site
According to experts, those items would have been used in ancient times for people who had broken society’s rules. The items were also buried with people who were feared to have some kind of supernatural abilities. “They’re sprinkling honeysuckle all over the place,” Soren told The Washington Post. “There’s all these magic rites that are going on around this, which makes this cemetery so fascinating.”
An Evil Curse
For the exhumed children in the cemetery, 51 of the bodies have been proven to have died of malaria. Soren and his team believe that the locals, who didn’t understand that a disease was responsible for the deaths, feared the children would be able to come back from the dead and spread the curse.
The Excavations Continue
In addition to finding items in the graves to prevent the children from coming back from the dead, the team of archeologists also found that the 3-year-old girl, who died of malaria, had been buried with her hands and feet weighed down with stones to keep her in the grave. Over the summer of 2018, Soren and the team of archeologists continued their excavations into five more graves to see what else they could find. One of those graves was covered by a makeshift tomb that had been made with two large roof tiles.
The Expectation
“Knowing that two large roof tiles were used for this burial, I was expecting something unique to be found inside, perhaps a ‘double-inhumation’ – not uncommon for this cemetery – where a single burial contains two individuals,” David Pickel, a Ph.D. student at Stanford who directed the excavation, said in a statement released by the University of Arizona.
A Rare Discovery
“After removing the roof tiles, however, it became immediately clear to us that we were dealing with an older individual,” Pickel added. The child, who was later determined to be 10 years old, was by far the eldest child they had found in the cemetery. However, that wasn’t the only strange thing the team noticed.
A Vampire Burial
The 1,550-year-old skeleton had a rock stuffed into his or her mouth. Researchers believe the stone was intentionally placed in the child’s mouth after death during a funeral ritual, which is often referred to as a vampire burial. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s extremely eerie and weird,” said Soren. “Locally, they’re calling it the ‘Vampire of Lugnano.’”
Afraid of The Dead
The burial practice signaled that the people feared the child would come back to life. “This is a very unusual mortuary treatment that you see in various forms in different cultures, especially in the Roman world, that could indicate there was a fear that this person might come back from the dead and try to spread disease to the living,” said Jordan Wilson, a bioarcheologist and UA doctoral student in anthropology, who analyzed the skeletal remains.
Protection Against Evil
“We know that the Romans were very much concerned with this and would even go to the extent of employing witchcraft to keep the evil — whatever is contaminating the body — from coming out,” Soren said. While they haven’t done tests yet to prove the 10-year-old’s cause of death, they believe the ‘evil’ people were trying to ward off was actually malaria. According to the archeologists, the 10-year-old had an abscessed tooth, which is a side effect of malaria.
A Desperate Act
“Placing the stone in the child’s mouth is a literal or symbolic way of incapacitating them,” Wilson told The Washington Post. “It must have been a situation where you don’t know what’s happening, you have no idea. You’re almost trying anything in desperation and listening to whoever can come up with an answer,” Soren added. “It’s just genuinely eerie.”
The Dead Don’t Bury Themselves
Now, the team has plans to return to the site to continue excavations. The discoveries they have made so far, however, have given them an incredible insight into how people of the time reacted to diseases. “It’s a very human thing to have complicated feelings about the dead and wonder if that’s really the end,” Wilson said. “Anytime you can look at burials, they’re significant because they provide a window into ancient minds. We have a saying in bioarchaeology: ‘The dead don’t bury themselves.’ We can tell a lot about people’s beliefs and hopes and by the way they treat the dead.”
Fear of The Unknown
According to Wilson, the discovery proved that people of the time had no idea why so many were getting sick and dying and were desperately and fearfully trying to do anything to make it stop. “It’s something that I thought a lot of while we were working on this project,” Wilson said. “It seems when humans are faced with the unknown, it’s been a very common reaction throughout our entire history to react with fear. I really feel deeply for this community that was dealing with this epidemic when they had no understanding of it.”
The Humanity of The Situation
In addition to people living in fear, the team was also dealing with the remains of children who died in pain. “It’s good to remember that when you find something like this, that that was a real person who had suffered and who left behind a family,” Wilson said. “As exciting as it is for us to find something like that and look at it from a scientific point of view, it’s important to not forget the humanity of the situation, as well.”
Archeologists Discover Ancient ‘Vampire’ Buried In Italian Cemetery is an article from: LifeDaily