Atypical Burials in Early Medieval Poland

Abstract

Excavations at early medieval cemeteries in Poland often reveal traces of mortuary behavior which deviate considerably from the normative treatment of the dead. Most of these atypical practices involved interring the corpses in prone position, laying or throwing stones on them, or cutting their heads off, but other variants have also been recorded, e.g., covering the bodies with clay or piercing them with stakes and other sharp objects. Graves of this kind have always been difficult to interpret. In the early twentieth century, Polish scholars only mentioned them briefly in their publications, without offering any detailed commentary about their possible meanings, while in the 1970s, the problematic term “anti-vampire burials” was coined, implying that these were burials of vampires. This article provides a critical overview of past and present studies on atypical burials in Poland by drawing on the results of a research project entitled Bad Death in the Early Middle Ages: Atypical Burials from Poland in a Comparative Perspective. The discussion incorporates new and previously unpublished evidence and a reassessment of archival documentation kept in a range of Polish museums and scientific institutions, which challenges the previously accepted “vampire” interpretation and sophisticates our understanding of unusual funerary phenomena.