The skeleton of a fifth century child shows evidence of "the burial of a vampire"

Archaeologists have discovered the skeleton of a 10-year-old child on an ancient Roman site in Italy with a rock carefully placed in his mouth. This suggests that those who buried the child – who is probably dead from malaria during a deadly fifth century epidemic – feared that he would resurrect and transmit the disease to those who survived . The locals call it the "vampire of Lugnano".

"This is a very unusual mortal treatment that is found in different forms in different cultures, especially in the Roman world," said Jordan Wilson, a graduate student in bioarchaeology at the University of Arizona . He added that this could "indicate a fear that this person could come back from the dead and try to spread the disease to the living".

Almost all cultures on Earth have a version of the vampire myth (or proto-vampire). Chinese folklore has the Jiang shi,[[[[corrected]who are reanimated bodies coming out of the grave to become the prey of the living; a type has sharp fangs to better bite the neck of the prey. Russian, Albanian, Indian and Greek folklore has similar undead monsters. Russian villagers in the Middle Ages often dug stakes into the bodies of alleged vampires at their burial to prevent them from standing up.

A team of archaeologists from the University of Arizona and Stanford University made this discovery over the summer by searching a site known as Necropolis of the Bambi ("Baby Cemetery") because it was meant to be exclusively for the burial of infants and young children who died as a result of a malaria epidemic. (Archaeologists are rethinking this hypothesis.) Based on the open position of the child's jaw, they concluded that the rock had been placed there intentionally, as this would not have happened naturally, the decomposing body. There were also marks of teeth on the surface of the stone.

The most likely explanation is that the inhabitants acted in this way so that the deceased child remains so. Previous excavations among the human remains in the baby cemetery brought to light various objects commonly associated with magic at the time: raven talons, toad bones and bronze cauldrons filled with ashes. The oldest remains found previously were those of a three-year-old girl on her hands and feet hit by stones.

"I have never seen anything like it. It's extremely strange and strange. "

"We know that the Romans were going so far as to use witchcraft to prevent the evil – anything that contaminates the body – from going out," said the Arizona University archaeologist. David Soren at the head of the search. Nevertheless, this latest discovery is not a common practice and none of the other skulls found on the site so far has had a stone in the mouth.

"I have never seen anything like it," says Soren. "It's extremely strange and strange." However, there have been similar burials in other places in Italy, such as the 16th century old woman, exhumed from the 2009, who was buried with a brick in her mouth. She was nicknamed the "vampire of Venice".

The team will return to the site next summer to complete their excavation work, perhaps discovering more "vampire burials". At the very least, archaeologists will learn more about this epidemic of malaria and the community's response to this epidemic almost 1,500 years ago. "Every time you look at burials, they are significant because they open a window on ancient spirits," says Wilson. "In bio-archeology, we say:" The dead do not bury themselves. "We can say a lot about people's beliefs and hopes because of the way they treat the dead."