ARCHAEOLOGY

THEY WALK AGAIN

Pandemics and epidemics have always been with us – at least back to Mesopotamian times, according to information on the cuneiform tablets left behind, and doubtless earlier. A novel angle on old plagues is found in a new study of rare but curious types of burials – namely, prone, face-down, interments. In the paper, researchers studying 95 examples of the phenomenon at over 60 locations in German-speaking Europe during mediaeval and Early Modern times has found a potential link with epidemics. During the Middle Ages such burials seem to have been pious expressions of penance, but in Europe in the 1300s something changed – there was an increase in face-down burials, including some on the outskirts of consecrated Christian burial grounds. This coincided with plagues that swept across Europe, beginning in 1347.

Buy why prone burials? Well, they could have been intended as apotropaic efforts to deal with the undead – with revenants. (This is possibly akin to other kinds of actions performed on certain corpses in Slavic countries to prevent them wandering as vampires, or vrykolakes.) It is suggested that as people died at an almost unmanageable rate in the plagues, people became more openly assailed by the disturbing presence of decomposing bodies. Corpses can shift as intestines fill with gas, causing disturbing noises. Hair and nails seem to grow as the flesh around them shrinks. Anthropologist Amelie Alterauge, one of the paper’s authors, noted that in German-speaking regions lore told of the nachzehrer (“corpse devourers”), corpses that consumed themselves and their burial shrouds, and sucked the life from their surviving relatives in the process. She somewhat vividly comments that decaying bodies can move and “make smacking sounds” so it “might seem as if they’re eating themselves and their burial shrouds.” Also feared at the time were wiedergänger – “those who walk again”.

The study also reveals further incidence of prone burials, often on the edges of Christian cemeteries, up to the 17th century. Again, the researchers think they would probably have been associated with epidemics. For instance, the prone burial of a middle-aged man in an isolated part of a Swiss cemetery was dated to between 1630 and 1650 from coins found in the grave. This period coincided with a series of plagues in Switzerland. The next step, say the paper’s authors, is to take DNA samples from a range of prone burials to check if the association of face-down burials with outbreaks of disease can be more securely pinned down. National Geographic, 3 Sept 2020. Original paper in PLoS One 15(8), 2020.

THE DEAD ALL AROUND

Continuing our less than cheery theme, we turn this time to evidence that some Neolithic monuments may have been built as ‘upside down’ houses for the dead. This is according to a new, meticulous study of the Maeshowe chambered cairn (c.2,800 BC) on the mainland of the Orkney Islands in Scotland. The mound contains passages and chambers built from crafted slabs of flagstone. The interior contains a 36ft (11m) long passageway (pictured at right) that leads to a squarish chamber. The study, by the University of the Highlands and Islands, proposes that side chambers within the structure were designed in an inverted fashion as netherworlds for the dead to pass on into the afterlife. The investigator is Jay van der Reijden, who has researched communally built dry-stone Neolithic tombs – referred to as ‘houses for the dead’ given the similar layout to domestic dwellings. “The wall-stones are like wallpapers, and when you repeatedly hang them upside down in distinct locations patterns become discernible,” she explains. “The swaps include the reversal of multiple architectural features normally placed on the right-hand side being on the left only inside the side chambers. The interpretation is that the side chambers are built to be within the netherworld, with the main chamber walls acting as membranes, separating this life and the next, and that the internal walling material is conceived to physically represent the underworld.” Archaeology, 4 Sept; Phys. Org News, 7 Sept 2020. Original paper in Archaeology Review from Cambridge (ARC) 35.1, 4 Sept 2020.

Another prehistoric custom concerning the dead comes from Bronze Age Britain. Archaeologists have been studying what seems to have been a commonplace handling of human bones there. One example was a whistle made from a carved and polished human thigh bone found with a man buried near Stonehenge. Another case involved a woman buried near Stockton-on-Tees, who was interred with skulls and limb bones from at least three other people who died an estimated 60-170 years before her.

“Bones belonging to significant ancestors were curated as relics, and even made into artefacts, some of which may have been used or displayed in the homes of the living,” says lead investigator Professor Joanna Bruck. “Radiocarbon-dating of curated bones suggests that Bronze Age people’s sense of identity and belonging was based on their links to known kin who had died in the past few decades rather than to distant and anonymous ancestors.”

“This is the first evidence we have for an established Bronze Age tradition of curating human remains for substantial lengths of time, over several generations,” adds Dr Thomas Booth, who carbon-dated the bones at the University of Bristol. “There wasn’t a mindset that human remains go in the ground and you forget about them. They were always present among the living.” Guardian, 1 Sept 2020. Original article in Antiquity.