An ancient child’s ‘vampire burial’ included steps to prevent resurrection
The 10-year-old’s skeleton had a stone placed in the mouth
By Bruce Bower
Excavations in an ancient Roman cemetery turned poignantly eerie last summer.
In one grave lay a roughly 10-year-old child, possibly the victim of malaria, with a stone inserted in his or her mouth. That practice was part of a funeral ritual intended to prevent the youngster from rising zombielike and spreading disease to the living, researchers say. Such “vampire burials” indicate signs of a belief among people of the time that the dead could come back to life.