Archaeologists find female 'vampire' skeleton in Venice
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Venice, Italy - The skeleton of woman who was probably believed to have been a vampire when she died in the Middle Ages has been uncovered in Venice, news agency reported Friday. Archaeologists made the find on Lazzaretto Nuovo, one of the hundreds of islands that make up the lagoon city, the ANSA news agency reported. A brick found lodged in the skeleton's mouth suggests the woman's body was "staked",University of Florence expert Matteo Borrini said. The procedure, according to Medieval superstition, prevented "undead vampires" from sucking blood from the corpses of those buried near them, Borrini explained. The woman's burial is also probably linked to the belief that witches and vampires were responsible for spreading bubonic plague, the so-called "Black Death" that killed millions of people in Europe in the Middle Ages. Lazzarretto Nuovo was probably used as a burial ground for victims of the plague, according to the experts.
Copyright DPA
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Scientific proof is needed
By:
AT ,
Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:14:44 GMT
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Although Dr Borrini's discovery is interesting, he will need to support it with archaeological, anthropological, forensic and literary facts. I have devoted my PhD research and career in the study of unusual burials, including the so-called 'vampire burials', and the standards required to prove such cases are very high and demanding (see e.g. http://bioarchaeology-palaeopathology.blogspot.com/2007/06/phd-thesis-abstract.html). I have never heard of the tradition of placing a brick in the mouth, so a scientific bibliographic reference by Dr Borrini would be most welcome . On the photo, it is not clear that this is a brick and not a stone either.
In addition, Dr Borrini is mistaken to claim that this is 'the first such "vampire" to have been forensically examined'. I had presented a paper on the subject at a conference in Chieti, Italy, in 2000 and subsequently published it in 2001: http://bioarchaeology-palaeopathology.blogspot.com/2007/06/vampires-beyond-legend.html. It is a fact that there have been previous such cases discovered and examined by e.g. Dr Sledzik and Dr Bellantoni in New England in 1994, Prof. Hector Williams and Dr Sandra Garvie-Lok in Greece in the late '80s and myself in Greece during my PhD research.
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