Vampire Plague Victim Spurs Gruesome Debate

[theshee]

What may have been an exorcism of a vampire in Venice is now drawing bad blood among scientists arguing over whether gravediggers were attempting to defeat an undead monster.

The controversy begins with a mass grave of 16th-century plague victims on the Venetian island of Nuovo Lazzaretto. The remains of a woman there apparently had a brick shoved in her mouth, perhaps to exorcise the corpse in what may have been the first vampire burial known in archaeology, said forensic anthropologist Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy.

Vampire superstitions were common when plague devastated Europe, and much, if not all, of this folklore could be due to misconceptions about the natural stages of decomposition, Borrini said. The recently dead can often appear unnervingly alive. As the corpse's skin shrinks and pulls back, for example, hair and nails may appear to grow after death.

The remains of the woman were apparently wrapped in a shroud, based on the position of her collarbone, Borrini suggested. A corpse might appear to have chewed through its shroud because of corrosive fluids it spewed as it decayed, perhaps frightening gravediggers into thinking it was a vampire.

Vampire myths link the monsters with contagions, and the plague ran rampant in Venice in 1576, killing as many as 50,000 people, nearly a third of the city, including famed Renaissance artist Titian. The gravediggers that ran across this corpse may have wanted to prevent a vampire from ravaging the city further with pestilence, Borrini and his colleague Emilio Nuzzolese suggested in the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 2010. The "vampire" has since been discussed on Italian national TV and a National Geographic documentary.

However, now other researchers are openly deriding this claim. Where some might see an exorcism, these researchers see a brick accidentally falling into a skull's mouth.

"I find surprising that the reviewers of an important journal such as the Journal of Forensic Sciences had given permission to publish the article of Nuzzolese and Borrini with inadequate scientific evidence to support their hypothesis," physical anthropologist Simona Minozzi at the University of Pisa in Italy told LiveScience.



To start with, photos of the site where the purported vampire was found show her remains were surrounded by stones, bricks and tiles, Minozzi said. They also note the jaws of corpses often gape open, allowing any number of items to fall in - for instance, they note a skeleton with a thighbone in its mouth was found in the cemetery of Vecchio Lazzaretto in Venice.

They also note there is no clear evidence of a shroud, as coffin walls might also explain the position of the collarbone. They add that the legend of the so-called nachzehrer, or "shroud-eaters," were apparently tightly confined to the East German region and not Italy. Minozzi and her colleagues detailed their argument in the May issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

Minozzi called the vampire idea "nonsense." "Unfortunately, this is a common practice in the last few years in Italy," she said. "This is probably due to the strong cutting of funds for research in Italy, so researchers seek to attract attention and money through sensational discoveries that often have little to do with science."

Borrini and his colleagues strongly rebut the argument over their analysis. They discussed how the physical details of the site supported their interpretation in a response in the May issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, and that while the legend of the nachzehrer was found in Germanic areas, Venice was a crossroads during the epoch in which such legends from distant lands might have circulated.

"Regarding the criticism of my Italian colleagues, I have to admit that it's a quite unpleasant situation," Borrini said. "It seems that the main reasons of the interest in my research is its mass media success. Well, I want to be clear regarding this - I never looked for the media."
www.livescience.com/20619-vampire-plague-victim-spurs-debate.html

[boxfree]

Beautiful set of teeth.

[Wes Gear]

The remains of a woman there apparently had a brick shoved in her mouth

Maybe she just wouldn't shut up. ;D


Eighth century skeletons buried with stones in mouths

Archaeologists have made a gruesome discovery which could be straight out of a horror movie.

A number of 8th Century human skeletons have been found with large stones stuck in their mouths - something researchers believe locals did to stop the dead from returning to walk the Earth as zombies.

The research started more than six years ago in what was supposed to be a survey of medieval churches in County Roscommon, Ireland.



Chris Read, from the Institute of Technology in Sligo, Ireland, has been leading the team during a series of digs carried out between 2005 and 2009 at Kilteasheen, near Loch Key.

He said that two male skeletons, one aged between 40 and 60 and the other a young adult probably in his twenties, had been found among hundreds of other remains.

'One of them was lying with his head looking straight up. A large black stone had been deliberately thrust into his mouth.

'The other had his head turned to the side and had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated,' he told Discovery News.

The two men were lying side by side and discovered together.

The team first thought they had stumbled across a Black Death burial ground when remains of people buried at the end of the Middle Ages had stones stuck in their mouths because they were involved in vampire slaying rituals.

It is thought about 3,000 skeletons buried from 700 to 1400 are still buried at the site.

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2038565/Skeletons-buried-stones-mouths-stop-returning-zombies-discovered-Ireland.html#ixzz1wVf9s9Cm

LIVING IN FEAR OF THE LIVING DEAD

The belief that zombies can return from the grave as living dead has its roots in Haitian culture, where it is linked to voodoo magic and witchcraft.

The superstition is so strong on the Caribbean island that relatives of the dead will dismember a corpse so that it cannot return as a zombie. Others will stand guard over a grave to protect the body until decomposition has set in.

According to believers, a zombie will rise up from its grave in a hypnotic trance, capable of responding to stimuli but lacking self-awareness.

Initially, archaeologists believed the ritual of placing a stone in the mouth may have related to vampire slayings, where a stake is driven into the heart of a victim. Vampires were believed to spread plague and a stone placed inside the mouth was thought to prevent this. Practitioners also believed that placing a stone in the mouth of a corpse would starve it.

In 2009, the remains of a 60-year-old woman with a rock thrust in her mouth were discovered in a mass grave from the 1500s on the Venetian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo.

But vampire culture did not evolve until the 16th Century and therefore does not explain why stones were found in skeletons dating from the eighth century.

'In this case, the stones in the mouth might have acted as a barrier to stop revenants from coming back from their graves,' Dr Read said.

According to the archeologist, the mouth 'was viewed as the main portal for the soul to leave the body upon death'.

'Sometimes, the soul could come back to the body and re-animate it or else an evil spirit could enter the body through the mouth and bring it back to life," he said.

Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2038565/Skeletons-buried-stones-mouths-stop-returning-zombies-discovered-Ireland.html#ixzz1wVfiZNbR

[brillbilly]

Well i think the brick was placed in the mouth at burial!
As we all know the lower jaw is not attached by bone,so there is no way a brick could flick the skull up to open the mouth,then fall in!

[Deleted]

'Vampire' skeletons unearthed in Bulgaria
From correspondents in Sofia, Bulgaria
AFP
June 06, 20127:38AM

Two skeletons had been stabbed with rods through chest
Vampire legends are widespread across the Balkans
People believed the rod would pin the dead into their graves


ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Bulgaria unearthed two skeletons from the Middle Ages pierced through the chest with iron rods to keep them from turning into vampires, the head of the history museum said today.

According to pagan beliefs, people who were considered bad during their lifetimes might turn into vampires after death unless stabbed in the chest with an iron or wooden rod before being buried.

"These two skeletons stabbed with rods illustrate a practice which was common in some Bulgarian villages up until the first decade of the 20th century," national history museum chief Bozhidar Dimitrov said after the recent find in the Black Sea town of Sozopol.

People believed the rod also would pin the dead into their graves to prevent them from leaving at midnight and terrorizing the living, the historian explained.

The practice was common, Dimitrov added, saying that some 100 similar burials already had been found in Bulgaria.

Archaeologist Petar Balabanov, who in 2004 unearthed six nailed-down skeletons at a site near the eastern town of Debelt, said the pagan rite also was practiced in neighbouring Serbia and other Balkan countries.

Vampire legends are widespread across the Balkans. The most famous is that of Romanian count Vlad the Impaler, known as Dracula, who staked his war enemies and drank their blood.