Lively Debate over 'Vampire' Skeleton

'We all know about archaeological finds that get sensationalized and distorted by the media. What kind of obligation do archaeologists have to try to correct such stories? Should we ignore them? Perhaps they are not important in the larger scheme of scholarship. Perhaps we think that trying to correct them would be futile. Or should we try to correct the record? I occasionally try to address media errors when its a topic I know well and can speak with authority, although my success rate (with letters to the editor, etc.) has not been very high.'

So wrote archaeologist Michael E. Smith on his blog, Publishing Archaeology, in 2009 when he published an e-mail from bioarchaeologist Anastasia Tsaliki expressing a sceptical attitude towards the 'vampire' find in Venice. Tsaliki herself is author of Vampires Beyond Legend: A Bioarchaeological Approach. In M. La Verghetta and L. Capasso (eds.), Proceedings of the XIII European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association, Chieti, Italy, 18-23 Sept. 2000, Edigrafital S.p.A: Teramo- Italy, 295-300.

I have myself expressed some concern, cf. also this post, about the popular presentation of the archaeological find of a 'vampire' by Borrini and his colleagues, but have so far not written about their original paper on the subject, Forensic Approach to an Archaeological Casework of "Vampire" Skeletal Remains in Venice: Odontological and Anthropological Prospectus by Emilio Nuzzolese and Matteo Borrini, published in November 2010 in The Journal of Forensic Sciences (Vol. 55, No. 6, p. 1634-7). In it the deceased individual in question, i.e. the old woman, is referred to as 'ID 6'. The authors find that 'the insertion of the brick into the dead woman's mouth must be considered intentional,' and that 'this practice probably had a symbolic and ritual value, that the sextons working in the graveyard during the plague handled the corpse this way, despite the danger of infection.'

In conclusion, Nuzzolese and Borrini: 'assume that during the digging of a hole in the ground for a person who had just died of the plague, the gravediggers cut off the ID 6 deposition. They noticed the shroud (its presence is suggested by the verticalization of the clavicle) and a hole, which corresponded with the mouth. As the body appeared as quite intact, they probably recognized in that body the so-called vampire, responsible for plague by chewing her shroud. As a consequence, they inserted a brick in her mouth. The sequence of those events (time since death) can be deduced by the lack of alteration on the skeleton joints, so that we can suppose that the gravediggers dealt with the corpse when it was not disjointed yet. The insertion of the brick into the mouth at the time of the primary deposition can be ruled out because we have no reference, even folkloric, for such a practice in that historical and cultural context.

It is not strange that superstitions concerning vampires were widespread in the 16th to 17th centuries even in a "cosmopolitan" and evolved city like Venice. It is surprising, however, that this exorcism ritual has been clearly recognized in an archaeological context: the ID 6 grave could well be the first "vampire" burial archaeologically attested and studied by a forensic odontological and anthropological approach.'

From Minozzi, Fornaciari and Fornaciari (J Forensic Sci, May 2012, Vol. 57, No. 3, p. 843-4)

This May, however, a commentary was published by The Journal of Forensic Sciences with an answer by Nuzzolose and Borrini (Vol. 57, No. 3, p. 843-8). The authors of the commentary, Simona Minozzi, Antonio Fornaciari and Gino Fornaciari from the Universities in Pisa and Siena, have responded because 'in Italy the story of the "Vampire of Venice" is receiving extraordinary emphasis in the mass media', while it is still only supported by the one article by Nuzzolese and Borrini, and in the opinion of Minozzi and co., 'the argumentation presented in this paper suffers from many drawbacks and seems to lack adequate scientific evidence, not only in the conclusions, but also in its initial assumptions.'

Minozzi and co. discuss the photographs available to them, which in their opinion support the theory that the woman was interred in a coffin. They also find that the assumption that there was a shroud is based on 'weak evidence', and stress that the Nachzehrer belief 'is not attested in Italy during the Modern Age, but appears to be tightly confined to the East German world.' Furthermore, they point to other examples of skeletons found with stones or other objects in their mouth, that bear no relation to e.g. revenant beliefs:

'During archaeological excavations of medieval and postmedieval cemeteries, the opened jaw with preserved connection of the themporo-mandibular joints is frequently observed as an effect of decomposition in empty space. This condition can be followed by a secondary oral cavity filling, even with stones or bricks, if these are present in the surrounding sediment. We report an example from the medieval cemetery of Vecchiano, Pisa. Therefore the same event might have occurred in the Nuovo Lazzaretto burials; to support our more simple theory, we show an "eater of bones", a skeleton found in the cemetery of Vecchio Lazzaretto in Venice with a similar archaeological context.' (see the figure above)

Consequently, they find that the intentionality of of the action of a 'Vampire Slayer' inserting a brick into the woman's mouth is insufficiently documented, and 'therefore, we cannot draw any conclusions about the intentionality of the action, even less about the symbolic burial ritual.'

In their response, Nuzzolese and Borrini present more information on the find and their theory. They note that 'the intentional deposition of the brick in the mouth is strictly linked with the contextual analysis'. Analysing the position of various skeletons intercepting the ID 6 remains, that at the time of the deposition of one of the other corpses (ID 1), 'the body of ID6 was uncovered during its decomposition: the gravediggers encountered that cadaverous phenomena which was interpreted, at the time, as evidence of vampirism.' If the woman was not skeletonized, Nuzzolese and Borrini find it possible to 'hypothesize the presence of a shroud because of the verticalization of the left clavicle associated with medial rotation of humeri. It is certainly true that this phenomenon might be attributable to a wall effect originated from possible barriers in the ground (not present in this case) or a coffin, but no evidence of wooden containers for ID6 or any other skeletons in the site were attested during the excavation.' They also note that they have found pins to hold the bandages and shrouds on other individuals at the site, and go on to comment:

'The shroud question seemed to tax the Italian colleagues, to the point that they finished the sentence about the hypothesis shroud mastication with an exclamation mark. It is possible that because of the brevity of the case report the authors have not clearly emphasized the nature of those cliams: it is a reconstructive hypothesis based on ancient stories related to the "mastication" by the dead, or the fact that some of them were found apparently with chewed clothes or shrouds. This sort of postmortem bulimia (as already mentioned and published originated from the difference between the timing of fabric and body decomposition) was at the basis of the belief of a particular species of vampire, the nachzehrer.

Therefore, the authors found no evidence of a hole in the shroud but assumed the presence of the cloth and the intentional inclusion of a brick for the reasons already explained, they reconstructed, according to ancient tales, the possible scene of the accidental exhumation. During this operation, because of the lack of understanding the process of decomposition, the gravediggers thought they had come face to face with a vampire and then decided to exorcise it to stop the plague that raged in the city.'

Nuzzolese and Borrini then discuss the brick, noting that 'The deep introduction in the oral cavity and the relationship with the jaw bones preclude that the brick was simply loose in the soil after a "secondary infiltration of the sediment" (differently from what we see in Fig. 3 of our Italian colleagues' article), and also the preservation of anatomical joints (which is not present in the "eater of bones" from Lazzaretto Vecchio) "suggests the intentionality of the action" and can exclude that "the brick was accidentally put into the mouth".'

Finally, Nuzzolese and Borrini comment on the plausibility that the Nachzehrer belief travelled from one part of Europe to another: 'As it is known, when goods move, men, ideas, and cultures travel with them.' They take Philip Rohr's words on putting a small stone into the deceased's mouth as evidence 'that the practice to put something inedible in the nachzehrer mouth was attested and diffused: if no other archeological evidence of this ritual has been discovered (or recognized), this does not mean that the author's hypothesis is invalid.'

In conclusion, they quote from Tommaso Braccini's book Prima di Dracula: Archeologia del vampiro (2011): 'compared with many other more uncertain and hypothetical cases, that of the vampire of Venice (a vampire, in fact, only in the broadest sense of the word) is particularly striking and also supported by a rather solid base documentary.'

14th century illustration of gravediggers burying plague victims, according to Meurer: Vampire: Die Engel der Finsternis (2003)

So what are we to think without going into a discussion of details that no doubt require specialized knowledge to pass a verdict on? Nuzzolese and Borrini clearly maintain that their hypothesis is valid: The brick was intentionally stuck into the mouth of the dead person when the gravediggers chanced upon seeing the corpse while burying another deceased individual. The act of putting the brick into a corpse's mouth in their opinion must be understood in terms of the belief in the masticating dead, a belief that is not documented in Italy, but hypothetically may have been known by gravediggers at the Lazaretto Nuovo near Venice. And a belief that was frequently connected to the plague, a circumstance that may have contributed to the use of an otherwise unusual type of apotropaics in the area during an epidemic.

Assuming that Nuzzolese and Borrini are correct, their hypothesis poses intriguing questions concerning the possible migration of 'necrophobic' beliefs and customs, consequently contributing to the fundamental discussion regarding the geographical and cultural background to various European beliefs in what we would today call 'the undead'. To what extent are these diverse forms of 'posthumous magic' manifestations of common concepts concerning the dead and their possible malevolent effects on the living? To what extent are they the result of migrations, cultural influences and synchretism?

My own search for von Schertz's Magia posthuma was sparked by an interest in understanding the relationship between these diverse beliefs that sometime in the 18th century increasingly became understood under the common term of vampirism. Whether the brick placed in the mouth of a skeleton was actually put there to prevent the woman from harming the living or not, these are questions that the literature on vampires and other revenants should address more explicitly than is usually the case.

Furthermore, whatever people think of the find in Venice or of the media's way of telling the story about it, I think that this find has once and for all made archaeological evidence part of the field of vampires and other revenants. Unfortunately, a lot of the finds have only been described in reports and papers in native languages, that is e.g. the case of some of the relevant archaeological finds in the Czech Republic, so it can be difficult to get hold of exact information. Still, here is a subject that has only partially been explored and developed in the literature, so I hope we will see some interesting books and papers on the subject in the future.


I am grateful to Roberto Labanti for notifying me of recent developments in the case.

A Matter of Corporeal Evidence

'In the 1990s, a Spanish doctor revealed that, while watching a Dracula film, he began to suspect that the lore came about from people observing the effects of rabies. It's probably only a matter of time before another doctor, watching another movie on television, reveals a connection between the vampire lore and the common cold.

Here we must insist that the movies and the media in general are not good sources of information on vampire folklore, however sound they are in the matter of aliens, crop circles and conspiracy theories. In fact, studying the vampires by watching movies is like studying the Civil War by watching Gone with the Wind, except without all the accuracy.

This observation is even truer now than it was twenty years ago, for the fictional vampire has evolved wonderfully - and this evolution is enlightening. To reacquaint myself with the fiction, I actually bought two vampire movies and watched a third on television. Well, I bought the movies at a yard sale. For fifty cents each. Still, they weren't much of a bargain. Trying to watch one of the movies reminded me of trying to read the novel it was based on. I had several false starts before I got far enough into it to state definitively that it was mining fantasies at some remove from my own. In fact, I started to understand why the average doctor, watching a vampire movie, finds himself making up wild theories in preference to following the plot.'

Paul Barber's preface to the 2010 edition of his Vampires, Burial & Death is certainly one of the more amusing texts on vampires I have read in a while.

At the same time, Barber's preface pays due to the legendary Danish archaeologist who apparently played a key role in developing Barber's interest in vampires: P. V. Glob, author of among other books, Mosefolket, translated into English as The Bog People:

'Many years ago, my wife, an archaeologist, handed me a copy of P. V. Glob's The Bog People and suggested that I might enjoy reading it. She had apparently noticed my interest in things creepy and disgusting, and Glob's book is full of such. It is an account of Iron Age corpses that, steeped in acidic bogs, had stood the test of time and emerged millennia later in remarkably good condition.'

Peter Vilhelm Glob (1911-1985) was involved in examining a number of those 'bog people', bodies found in Danish bogs, and also played an important role at two major Danish museums: Moesgård Museum (where the so-called Grauballe Man is exhibited), and the National Museum.

In his preface, Barber says that 'Glob's book has stood the test of time as well,' although one must remember that a lot has happened during the fifty years since he wrote it. In a recent Danish study of mummified bog bodies, Mumificerede moselig (Høst & Søn, 2002), historian and classical philologist Allan A. Lund dissects the various theories that have been proposed regarding the bog bodies, and it is apparent that also some of the views proposed by Glob are dubious. Barber himself adds that he 'had a few quibbles with' Glob's book:

'It was clear to me, for example, that pinning bodies down in bogs had a practical purpose that Glob seemed unaware of: left to their own devices, bodies tend to pop to the surface of watery areas, simply because, as they decompose, the gases of decomposition alter their specific gravity, turning them into something resembling a buoyant, spooky balloon. Staking them in the bog not only released these gases but physically held the bodies in place.'

Barber clearly linked these considerations to the folklore of vampires: 'What if this phenomenon was the original reason for the staking of the vampires?' Answering this question led to his influential book on vampires, and later on to co-writing a preface to a 2004 reissue of Glob's book:

'In 2004, the New York Review of Books decided to republish the very author whose book had inspired me to write this book. My wife was asked to write an introduction to The Bog People, and she agreed on the condition that we do it together. This led me to reread it. I still admire The Bog People, although now it seems almost understated and tasteful. The bog bodies, pickled in tannic and humid acid, remained quietly and decorously in place throughout their long history, whereas our vampires, always restless, took every opportunity to plague the living. They stayed out late at night, made distressing noises, stank to high heaven and beyond, and often couldn't be counted on to stay dead even after they were staked or decapitated. They didn't have superpowers, but they certainly had staying power.'

Curiously, archaeological finds have rarely been an inspiration for vampire research, as Austrian historian Hagen Schaub notes in his contribution to the vampirism conference in Vienna in 2009, Knochen und Bestattungsriten: Die Bedeutung archäologischer Funde zum Wiedergänger- bzw. Vampirglauben, although there are many relevant cases at hand in the archaeological literature:

'In der durchaus reichhaltigen Literatur zum Thema Vampirismus bzw. Wiedergänger im weitesten Sinn besitzen Abhandlungen zu archäologischen Funden seltsamerweise einen nur geringen Stellenwert. Die meisten Übersichtswerke zu Vampiren befassen sich gar nicht mit den sog "Vampirgräbern", obwohl archäologischen Abhandlungen in durhaus großer Zahl vorhanden sind.'

Schaub's paper is probably the most thorough analysis of various archaeological excavations that might be interpreted as proof of beliefs in vampires or other revenants. Ultimately, he concludes that it is very uncertain if these finds can in fact be connected to revenant beliefs. The archaeological evidence can usually be interpreted in alternative ways than those relating to apotropaics, and in many cases the revenant interpretation relies on the researcher's lack of knowledge of actual revenant beliefs (as was also the case of the Spanish doctor that Barber refers to, in fact Juan Gómez-Alonso).

Recently, archaeological finds have of course been popularly connected with vampires through Matteo Borrini's discovery of a brick in a female skeleton's mouth in Venice. In some respects, we might say that this return to visum et repertum vampire and revenant research brings us full circle with Frombald, Glaser, and Flückinger's dissection of Serbian corpses. In stead of investigating old books, the vampire researchers have returned to study the corporeal remains of persons who may have been suspected of being revenants.

Still, it is difficult to interpret these corporeal remains which, fortunately, only haunt the curiosity of archaeologists and other researchers.

Caroline Arcini of Sweden's National Heritage Board recently studied about 600 cases of skeletons found buried face down, what is known as prone burials, and proposed that these burials were not accidental, but a deliberate and widespread practice of humiliating dead people for deviant deeds done while alive, cf. e.g. National Geographic's news story.

In her article in the June 2009 issue of Current Archaeology, Arcini rules out premature burial as a general explanation, and although individual burials can, perhaps, be explained as examples of e.g. revenant beliefs, she rules it out generally:

'In some cultures it is believed that individuals with supernatural abilities should be laid face down, for fear that their power could escape through the mouth. It has, for example, been adduced as an explanation for one of the 101 African slaves found buried in a 16th to 17th century cemetery in Barbados. The individual in question, a woman, had been placed on her own in the largest burial mound in the cemetery.

However, while several individuals in prone burials have their faces in the earth, the majority have the head turned to one side - in other words, in the same way as many of those who are buried supine. A similar idea is that people might be buried face down to prevent them rising to haunt the living. Both forms of explanation are plausible in relation to isolated graves, but are untenable in relation to concentrations.' (p. 32-3)

In her conclusion, Arcini says that 'the occurence of prone burials indicates that society sanctioned this apparently negative treatment of the dead. Presumably, the grieving relatives had little say in the matter; funerary customs have always been controlled by social mores.

An interesting feature of this study is the possibility of surveying, through archaeology, a form of behaviour that is deeply rooted in humankind. It appears that, whatever the religion, whatever the standards we live by or are compelled to follow, there are reactions - such as the negative response to prone burial - which are deeply rooted and universal. However, lamentable, isolating, and negative it seems to us in modern times, being buried face down is an ancient and global practice.' (p. 35)

It is very hard to evaluate Arcini's view on the basis of her article only. Fellow Swede, Katarina Harrison Lindbergh, is sceptical in her recent book on vampires, Vampyrernas historia (Norstedts, 2011), as she finds Arcini's hypothesis an overinterpretation of the archaeological facts. Sweden, by the way, is the site of the remarkable find of the so-called Bocksten Man, who was 'poled' or staked in a way that all too easily would ignite the imagination of 'vampirologists'.

Archaeology, in any case, provides us with more interesting information than the theories proposed by people like Gómez-Alonso whose knowledge of 'vampires' is based on films or modern novels. However enjoyable and in other ways emotionally or intellectually stimulating such fiction can be, like Barber, 'we must insist that the movies and the media in general are not good sources of information on vampire folklore'. An issue of your local journal of archaeology, on the other hand, might perhaps be a better stimulus and inspiration.

Vampires of Venice

'The answer must be lurking somewhere in these ancient tomes,' the narrator of the above documentary says, as we see Italian forensic anthropologist Matteo Borrini studying old books in a gloomy, old library, echoing the description of vampire research in Eric Steinhauer's Vampyrologie für Bibliothekare.

Borrini finds Philip Rohr's 1679 De masticatione mortuorum, and I can not help being amused by how dramatically they present the book, even claiming that it contains 'an ancient ritual' with 'instructions for killing an undead corpse'. They then cut to Borrini, who without further ado identifies the masticating dead with vampires.

In the book accompanying the documentary, Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend, Mark Collins Jenkins includes a few references to the contents of Rohr's book (p. 140f): 'Rohr went on to cite a certain Adam Rother, who claimed that, as pestilence ravaged the German univesity town of Marburg in 1581, the dead in their graves could be heard uttering ominous noises from all over the town and surrounding countryside.'

Rohr actually writes: 'Sic Adamus Rotherus, Superintendens Martisburg. in Medit. de pest. meminit aliqvot cadaverum, qvæ Martisburgi, & in vicinis locis an. 1581. glocitarunt.' The reference appears to be to the book Piae meditationes et commonefactiones ex verbo dei/ Quas tempore pestiferae, luis, publice pro concione proposuit auditoribus suis Adamus Rotherus published in Wittenberg in 1584, and Rohr just says that Rother(us) in his book remembered that a number of cadavers cackled in Marburg and its neighbourhood.

It is interesting that he uses the word glocitarunt to describe the sound of the dead, as this signifies the natural sounds made by hen (glocio or 'glocito', to cluck or cackle). Other authors have tended to describe the sound as similar to that of pigs.
Anyway, the documentary is, of course, about the archaeological find of a skeleton with a stone in its mouth, which lead Borrini and others to speculate that it might be archaeological evidence of beliefs in vampires in Venice. One single sentence in Rohr's book, apparently, led Borrini to this hypothesis: 'Alii hoc medium non satis tutum rati, etiam mortuo, priusqvam ejus os claudatur, lapidem & nummum ponunt in ore, ut si in sepulcro mordere incipiat, lapidem & nummum inveniat, & ab esu abstineat.' I.e.: Others regard this means as not quite safe, so before the dead person's mouth is closed, they place a stone and a coin in the mouth, so that if the corpse begins to eat in the grave, it finds the stone and the coin and abstains from eating. One should note, that it says here that the mouth is closed, after the stone and coin have been placed in the mouth, so one must assume that the stone is just a small one and not a brick like the one found in Venice!

And by the way, Jenkins obviously quotes from the translation by Montague Summers in The Vampire in Europe, as he says that the stone and coin is placed 'in the cold mouth', the coldness of the mouth being an embellishment added by Summers.

In any case, as Jenkins writes: 'When Matteo Borrini read that, he understood why the brick had been thrust into the mouth of ID6: This person was suspected of being a vampire.' And the rest is history: The vampire theory made its way to global media, and in turn inspired a piece of vampire fiction!

At least I suppose that is why we find vampires in Venice in an episode from 2010 of the ongoing Doctor Who TV series, as you can see in the trailer below.



And as is often the case, fiction itself creates a myth, in this case an elaborate piece of science fiction as presented in the following video. Bricks thrust into the vampire's mouth, however, do not have a place in this mythology.



Some further surprises from the Doctor's time travel to Venice can be found in a making of featurette, and the National Geographics documentary is available on DVD, cf. the review here.