Of the 52 skeletons discovered in the fourth-century A.D. Roman cemetery discovered in the village of Great Whelnetham in Suffolk, England, 17 had been decapitated and the heads were placed between their owner's legs or feet. Why? Well...
When archaeologists opened medieval graves at a highway construction site near Gliwice, Poland, they came across skeletal remains of humans whose severed heads rested upon their legs...
Now the article about the English Vampire burials says that: "The decapitations might be related to pagan belief systems that held that spirits need to be released for the afterlife or even that the head was a container of the soul."
Which is why the head was cut off...The vampire was "the undead", the body which soul never left...So kind of linked...Otherwise all the dead would have been decapitated, right?
So the question is who were the people buried following Western Slavic vampire burial rituals in the late Roman cemetery in England? Or how did Medieval Western Slavs got to practice Roman Vampire burial rituals???
By the way you do know that Vampire is a Serbian word?
Few articles related to the Serbian (Slavic) vampire lore: Vampires, Tombstones, Stake, Enemy of demons
Too many vampiers for a cemetery.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that these decapitations were a practice belonging to a group that moved into the area, Peachey said. Now the question is are there in other parts of ancient Europe any funeral practices like these?
If you find one, please post the info here...
DeleteВ своих монументальных трудах по деревенской культуре Речи Посполитой этнограф Оскар Кольберг многократно затрагивал тему народного понимания «сверхчувственного мира». Он заметил, что в Великой Польше и Поморье упыря часто называли «вещим» или «вещуном». В его «Записках из Хелмно» говорится:
DeleteОни верят в так называемых «вещих», то есть упырей, которые встают из могил и душат родных, а вслед за ними и других людей. (...) Чтобы защититься от вампира, его выкапывают, отрезают голову и кладут ему между ног. Кровь, вытекшую после отсечения головы, дают выпить пострадавшему от укуса вампира.
Maybe they were just a bunch of decapitated criminals. Capital punishment by decapitation was quite often than, and why to be bothered to dig two holes, one for the body, one for the head.
ReplyDelete