The tomb of a "vampire" child discovered in Italy

A text of Renaud Manuguerra-Gagné

1500 years ago, the body of a 10-year-old child was buried in a Roman villa near what is today the village of Lugnano, in the heart of Italy. Although the death of a child was unfortunately not out of the ordinary at the time, this burial had nothing in common.

The skeleton, recently discovered by archaeologists from the University of Arizona, was found with the mouth wide open. An egg-sized stone was intentionally inserted between the child's teeth in a posthumous manner, as evidenced by the grooves left by them.

This symbolic gesture, which, according to archaeologists and anthropologists on the ground, was intended to prevent the child from returning from the dead, earned the body the nickname "Lugnano's vampire".

A cemetery with a heavy past

This discovery, announced in a statement from the University of Arizona, was made this summer in a cemetery called La Necropoli dei Bambini (baby cemetery), in the Italian region of Umbria, 100 kilometers north from Rome.

This cemetery, located in an abandoned Roman villa dating back to the 1st century, was established following a malaria epidemic that swept through a large number of frail people, especially children. So far, about fifty remains of young children have been discovered there.

The body of the recently exhumed child has not yet been tested for malaria, but traces of abscess found in one of his teeth suggest that the latter shared the fate of other bodies from this cemetery, in which malaria was confirmed after badyzes.

The 10-year-old, whose bad remains unknown, but whose age has been confirmed by dental badysis, is the oldest found on this field to date. However, archaeologists could still have many surprises, the excavations were not completed and expected to resume next year.

A bridge to the superstitions of the past

Although it is a unique find, it is not the only strangeness found in this cemetery. Several children were buried there with animal remains such as crow's feet, frog bones, or even cauldrons with the remains of sacrificed puppies.

Other remains were also held in place by heavy stones on their arms and legs. According to the researchers, these ritual gestures were intended to prevent an "evil" from returning.

The latter, however, specify that the fear was not so much that the dead take the form of vampires, as they are known in popular culture today, but rather that they come back to spread among the living the disease that had them washed away.

For Jordan Wilson, a doctoral student in anthropology who has examined bones, reacting to the unknown through fear is a deeply human behavior that has been commonly observed throughout history.

These rituals are therefore a unique opportunity to understand the myths of the time. "The dead do not bury themselves, explains the doctoral student. Much can be said about the beliefs, fears and hopes of people by observing how they bury their dead. "

Similar burial methods have been observed throughout Europe. In 2006, the remains of an elderly woman who had been buried in Venice in the 16th century were found with a large stone in her mouth and nicknamed "the vampire of Venice".

The body of a man dating from the 3rd or 4th century was also found in England in 2017 and, again, we could see the presence of this symbolic stone.

The researchers will return to this cemetery next summer to complete the excavations and give their thirst for knowledge the appeasement to which these deaths may not have been entitled.