Tombstones

Ancient tombstones on Morine, Bosnia

Are tombstones placed on top of the dead to "bind their souls" and stop them from wandering around and harming the living? 

Slavs used to place stones in, on and around graves to prevent the dead from rising up and escaping the body as a spirit and torment the living.

Sometimes the stones were placed in the person's mouth or on top of his body to "weigh his soul down".

Northwestern Poland, cemetery in the town of Kamien Pomorski. A person buried in one of the graves was pierced with a stake and a stone was placed in his mouth. Both ritual acts were performed to stop the dead from rising.

At Celakovice, about 30 kilometers north of Prague in the Czech Republic, fourteen "vampire" graves have been excavated, each with metal spikes driven through their bodies or heavy stones placed upon them. The graves are believed to date from the eleventh or twelfth century...

In three seventeenth-eighteenth century "vampire" graves were excavated at the cemetery in Drawsko, Poland. Two people were buried with iron sickles placed around their necks...

Whilst the third, a younger adult, was buried with the body tied up and stones put on his throat.

In Vrasta, Bulgaria a medieval "vampire" burial site was found during excavations of an ancient fortress. An elderly man was buried with a processed white stone deliberately placed over his heart. His feet had also been tied together.

That stones were used as soul, spirit anchors can be seen from the fact that they are used with or instead of stakes (wooden originally, metal later) which are the best known anti "vampire" weapon. Stakes were driven through bodies of suspected "vampires" to fix them to the ground and stop them from rising. There are reports that in the past, pagan Slavs marked every grave with a stake. And in some parts of Serbia where this custom survived until very recently, stakes were eventually replaced with tall slim standing stones, like these ones from Barajevo near Belgrade

That this was not just Slavic custom, can be seen from the fact that people buried with stones in their mouths were also in other parts of Europe. 

In Taverina, Italy, at "La Necropoli dei Bambini" or the Cemetery of Children, a 400 AD burial site where many babies and small children who died from malaria were buried, a 10-year-old child was buried with a stone in its mouth, which archaeologists believe was done to prevent it rising again from the dead.

During the survey of medieval churches in County Roscommon, Ireland, archaeologists discovered more than 120 skeletons dated to 7th-14th c. Two of them had stones wedged into their mouths "to stop their souls from escaping"

In the 3rd of 4th century AD in a farming community near the river Nene, in what’s now Stanwick, England, a man was buried face down, with a stone in his mouth where his tongue should be.

How old is this custom? I have no idea really. Where does it originate? Again, I don't know. But probably Balkans. Why? Have a look at this:

Nea Nikomedeia, Middle Neolithic (5500 - 3500 BC), Greece. Person buried with a stone in their mouth.

Another "vampire" burial? Most likely. I don't think this is a random thing. Showing a stone into the mouth of a dead person during his (hers) burial is a deliberate ritual act, rarely performed, based on a definite strong belief in that stone serving some very important purpose.

Anyone knows of any similar burials from Bronze Age and Iron Age Balkans? Or anywhere else in the world? Is it possible that this custom and this belief survived through all these millenniums? It wouldn't be the first...

Another more recent variant of this ritual, is placing piece of brick into deceased mouth instead of rock.

In Plovdiv, Bulgaria, skeleton was found facing westwards, with a brick fragment placed in its mouth, and a clay roofing tile over the head. The skeleton is one of 80 found in a necropolis in the old town part of Plovdiv, tentatively dated from the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries...

On the small Italian island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in the Venice lagoon, while excavating graves of plague victims buried in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, archaeologists discovered what they believe to be the remains of a female "vampire". The skull of a mature female was found with a brick placed in her mouth. According to the local folk tradition, brick or stone placed between the jaws was said to prevent a vampire from feeding on victims of the plague.

More about "vampire burials" can be found in this great article:

"Time to Slay Vampire Burials? The Archaeological and Historical Evidence for Vampires in Europe" by David Barrowclough

This use of brick fragments instead of stones in ritual tying down of the ghosts, shows that the reason why stones were used for this purpose was by then forgotten.

The use of rocks for tying ghosts down was used because people in the Balkans believed that stones and rocks absorb and trap spirits.

Remember the Serbian ritual trapping of someone's shadow into the stone foundations of a new house, in order to form a "protective spirit" which would watch over the house and its inhabitants?

Until the first person dies in the house and his spirit takes over the job of the protective spirit...

There are records of ritual building in of people into the foundations of important building such as fortresses and bridges for the same purpose. I talked about this in my post "New house"

These spirits were tied into the stone from which the building was built...

How archaic this belief that stones and rocks absorb and trap spirits is, can be seen from these two customs from the Balkans:

In Kosovo, when Albanians had to cut a particularly "powerful" tree, they used to place a pebble on the stump. Probably to stop the tree spirit from leaving the stump and punishing them for their crime...

In Serbia, when a particularly potent medicinal plant needed to be collected,  any stone found nearby was thrown in the air and the plant had to be pulled out before the stone fell on the ground or the plant spirit, which gave the plant its medicinal properties, would leave the plant for the stone, and the plant would be useless...

Here it was plant spirits, which were trapped by the rocks. So it seems that people in the Balkans believed that any spirit could be captured and preserved in the rock.

This is really cool and explains why for instance hearth, doorstep and house corners were by Serbs considered to be holy places. In the old houses of Central Europe, which were built out of wood, or wattle and daub, the only stone parts were hearth stones (stones which formed the bottom and the curb of the heath), doorstep stones and corner stones (which supported the main upright stakes which held the whole house)...

Slavs believed that their dead ancestors live with them in their houses under the hearth, under the doorstep and in the corners of the house...In stones which were located there...Interestingly these same places were by Slavs believed to be the places where God (first Pagan then Christian) resided...

This is why it was on the hearth, on the doorstep and in corners of the house, that Serbs made their sacrifices to the dead and to God...

The same belief of the corner stones being the seat of the protective spirit is found in Baltic countries. I talked about it in my post "Stones with narrow bottom bowls".

Slavs actually wanted their ancestors to live with them. They believed that it was the dead ancestors, their spirits, which protected the living and gave good health, good luck, good harvest....

So is this belief the reason why people believed in the power of stone idols? Stone is just a stone unless a spirit of an ancestor (or deity) is believed to reside inside of it. In which case stone is the deity. When Slavs brought sacrifices to the Dabog stone during the rain making ritual in Belarus, they were bringing sacrifices to Dabog...

When Slavs brought sacrifices and prayed to "Baba" (Grandmother) stones, they brought sacrifices and prayed to Mother Earth which resided in them...

This is seriously cool...