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Dealing With Your Demons, Medieval Style - Ep 280
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This week we take a closer look at three archaeology news articles. In Norway, an archaeology rescue program is finding and recovering archaeological remains when they are exposed to air by glacial melt. Some of the artifacts are incredibly well preserved examples of organic material that normally doesn't survive the archaeological record. Then we head over to the United States and take a look at a new evidence at a paleolithic hunting camp in Michigan, where researchers have found evidence of what animals they were processing with the store tools. And finally, a medieval grave of a child in Poland appears to have been buried with extreme anti-vampire measures.
Links
- THE GLOBAL WARMING ARCHAEOLOGY BONANZA
- Prehistoric Native American tools reveal what they ate at Great Lakes camp
- Medieval 'Vampire' Child Burial Used Extreme Measures to Keep Dead in Grave
- Archaeologists Unearth Grave of 'Zombie' Ancients Wanted Buried Forever
- TAS 239 - How to Bury a Vampire
Contact
- Chris Webster
[email protected] - Rachel Roden
[email protected]
RachelUnraveled (Instagram)
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to The Archaeology Show. TAS goes behind the headlines to bring you the real stories about archaeology and the history around us. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to The Archaeology Show, Episode 280. On today's show, we talk about rescue archaeology from melting glaciers, a Great Lakes Clovis site, and an anti-vampire burial in Poland. Let's dig a little deeper. Make sure you're not face down. You'll just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper.
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to the archaeology show. Hello. Happy birthday. Oh, it has been my birthday recently. Yes. When you're hearing this, yeah. Well, it's been everyone's birthday, technically. Well, everybody does have a birthday. Yes, that's true. Happy birthday to the world. How did this go from happy birthday to me to happy birthday to the world? Well, we got to be inclusive.
00:01:01
Speaker
Everyone that's having a birthday right now, happy birthday. There you go, perfect. Yeah, so happy to all September birthdays. Yeah. If September is literally the best month in the whole world, come at me. It is. It's still kind of summer. It's kind of getting fall. It's literally pumpkin spice comes out. Pumpkin Spice comes out, your parents were happy at Christmas. It's all a good thing. I mean, why do you have to go there? No, I feel very fortunate to have been born in September because I do love this month so much. And also, I have the best song for my birthday, the 21st of September. Do you remember?
00:01:40
Speaker
ah I'm not singing right now. i don't If you don't get that, oh
Impact of Melting Glaciers on Archaeology
00:01:44
Speaker
okay. Well you know what's not good for September? Global warming. Well no, it's not really good for any time of the year. Global warming can't exist though because it's getting colder right now.
00:01:56
Speaker
Oh, that's not how that works. Says people who don't know science. So yeah, always jump in on the arguments that the people on the wrong side make. Yeah, well, you've got to play both sides. Yeah, I guess so. You have to understand where they're coming from, maybe? Yeah, the global warming is good for archaeology.
00:02:14
Speaker
ah It does have its moments, I guess. We call it a silver lining, I guess. and we've had We've had topics like this before where we talk about sort of the silver lining of something like global warming. and this is just another This article is another example of that. I will say that our ah journalists tend to get this wrong, though. because yeah we have seen where well First off, this article's title is, Global Warming, Archaeology Bonanza.
00:02:36
Speaker
but It doesn't necessarily say it's good for archaeology, but I have seen yeah articles in the past that say, you know oh, global warming is great for archaeology. But depending on how you look at it, a lot of archaeologists and really kind of like stakeholders, and by stakeholders, people who are like ancestors or something like that,
00:02:54
Speaker
We'll say that the best preservation is to leave it buried and not touch it. So in ah in a sense, global warming is really bad for archeology because it's uncovering things that should remain buried because you know when they get uncovered, they get possibly destroyed. Yeah, and as we'll talk about in this article, it becomes a salvage operation. You don't have time to really study the context of where you're at and what's going on. And often, this kind of uncover uncovering, global warming, uncovered Uncovery? That's not a word. Uncovery. Uncovery. The uncovery as well. It's out of context, too, because the glaciers drag things around or whatever. I used to say you're even going to find everything. well yeah too True. You're going to miss half of it, too. You're going to miss a lot of it. okay One other thing about global warming, and then we'll talk about the actual article, but the flip side of global warming is that it's also covering up.
00:03:45
Speaker
sites, as the glaciers melt and the seawaters rise, it's covering up sites on the other end. So like yeah it might reveal things in the icy places, but it's covering them in the warm places. So, you know, double-edged sword, I guess. There's archaeologists on both ends of the spectrum going slow down. Yeah, exactly. Like, can we just like wait a second? We need to record this site. We need to be prepared to record sites over here. yeah Exactly. Yeah. So anyway. so Anyway, there's a lot of things that normally don't preserve in the archaeological record, yeah like fabric, hunting equipment, they call it, like wooden spears, arrow shafts, things like that. A lot of wood, basically. Wood and fabric. Wood, fabric, all those organic things that are not
00:04:28
Speaker
stone. They're not hardy. They don't make it through through time. yeah But they will be preserved in under things like ice, things like that. I mean, sometimes for thousands of years. Yeah, they can be. yeah Ice is the ultimate preserver, right? like Water, really. Well, yeah, yeah exactly. Which is kind of ironic, because once it's exposed to the elements, it starts to degrade rather quick. Yeah. And that's why this is ah the a salvage operation, basically, because they have to go find these things. Because it's not like they have a map. There's no treasure map pointing them to where things are going to be uncovered, right? No. So they have to go find them and then excavate quickly. And really not even excavate. You just recover them quickly before they deteriorate and are gone.
00:05:13
Speaker
So, one program that is trying to really kind of catch as much as they can in a place that has a lot of melting ice, well a place that had a lot of ice to begin with, yeah is Norway. yeah And the program is called the Glacier Archaeology Rescue Program.
00:05:28
Speaker
Sounds so, i know I don't know, like romantic. I know. I just like to call him Garp. gone Garp. It's a good name. I like it. I want to know what it is in Norwegian. Like, does it have some sort of really cool acronym in Norwegian? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, they're are they're on a quest to hunt for thawing artifacts in some of the most exposed areas. So they must have some literally heat maps, I would imagine, where they know where a lot of the thaw is happening more rapidly, probably. Yeah, I suppose that is the only kind of map that could help them target areas, right? It's not going to show them things, but it'll at least show them where to look, maybe. Well, and I wonder if, getting a little off track here, if they have sort of a cultural map along with a kind of a nice map or cultural map that shows them where some stuff may possibly intersect pretty historically. Or maybe they don't even know because it's under ice.
00:06:24
Speaker
Maybe. Yeah. I mean, like migration paths, yeah human migration paths might help point them. Also, as they're finding stuff, yeah and another're they're building maps as well. Yeah, true. true So um among the things that they have discovered recently is an Iron Age tunic that dates to 230 to 390 CE. Yeah. And this is long ago, 1800 years, but it's not like like your you know ice age cultures. But again, what makes this super significant and interesting is that it's fabric. To actually have fabric that is almost 2000 years old, that's what's so insane about this and so unique. And this particular tunic was made from very fine lamb or sheep's wool.
00:07:08
Speaker
And it is woven in a diamond twill pattern. Yeah. It's really cool when you look at the pictures too, because they actually have the picture in the article here of it just like laying on the ground as it was discovered. Yeah. All like dirty and just like crumpled up. You could easily walk over it.
00:07:24
Speaker
Doesn't it look like somebody like was a little bit warm and they like took off their over tunic and like crumpled it up next to them while they were sitting on a rock having lunch and then like walked off without it? Just totally walked away. yeah Yeah. Which I can totally imagine somebody doing it. Everybody's done that, right? Yeah. Kind of looks that way, actually. yeah Yeah. Somebody's super pissed off and just like turned around and just like, where is my tunic? Well, they probably were pissed off because it seems like this was a very nice and very warm tunic. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. They've also found what they call scaring sticks yeah that would have been used by reindeer hunters to drive animals where they would be killed. And I imagine these sticks were either they would like whack them together or whack them on the ground or something like that. yeah Literally scaring sticks to scare reindeer. To drive them into a place where it was easier to to you know kill one or two or however many they could handle at once. Makes sense. Archaeologists, being archaeologists, they're suggesting that one of those hunters could have worn this tunic. This is a little bit of a stretch. It is, it is. Did they find these next to each other with the sticks in the tunic? I know, I know. I always want to know more about the context before we like make that kind of association. yeah if they were if they If it was in the pocket of the tunic, OK. right like Sure, that makes sense. But if it was just nearby, i don't I don't know if I would make that association. What is a person-shaped tunic with like sticks in the ends of the arms? I don't think so. Right, right. But it is still, the story is really intriguing because we know those kind of people doing that kind of thing occupied this area. So making that association is somewhat logical, even if it lacks but hard evidence. Yeah. The cool thing about this is that you can see some of the modifications to the tunic. Yeah. And I think this is where you come in because they make some, they make some claims in the right up here that are a little bit misleading.
00:09:08
Speaker
Well, they do. and Because I wouldn't have seen it. Yeah. Now, the first thing they said is that it looks like it might have been sleeveless originally when it was first made, and then the sleeves were added later. And that does look legit. like When you look at it, you can see a difference in the fabric between the sleeves and the body, and possibly even up in the collar, but that might just be because it's the inside, too. It's hard to say.
00:09:30
Speaker
And then the other thing that they said, and I think this is just somebody who's not really understanding how twills work. So I can go into that just super briefly, but a woven twill fabric is by nature made of two colors. That's how you get those patterns, the diamond patterns, the, I mean, I guess you can do it in one pattern. That would be like your jeans or your twill pants if they're in one color, but then they're not in a, that's not a pattern. It's just a fabric. when My twill pants are like, yeah, exactly. yeah But like look closely at your jeans, and you will see that there is like a pattern there in the jeans, but it's a pretty basic one. That's your so your single color. But when you get into these diamond patternings and stuff like that, that's when you use two colors for the warp and the weft, and and you get the different the different shapes and patterns. And I know a little bit of something about this, because I had a loom at one point, and I was doing twill patterning on that loom. so
00:10:22
Speaker
That's what they have done here. So in the description of the different parts of the tunic, the article does say that there's patchy coloration. And they say specifically it's not due due to uneven bleaching by sunlight. and And that's true. It's not. This thing was frozen first and then covered by a layer ah layer of snow. like It's probably never seen the light. So that probably didn't happen. And the coloration is in the wrinkles.
00:10:49
Speaker
It's in the shape of the wrinkles that it was found in, so it's not where from the person. But it also isn't because of the two colors of of wool that they used either. They didn't make that mottled-looking effect on purpose, I guess is what I'm trying to say. That is from whatever happened to it after it was dropped and then preserved.
00:11:10
Speaker
The two colors of wool were used to make the diamond shape that you can see in one of the pictures. And then there's another picture below it that shows sort of more of an inner mixing. And that color was also made by the two colors of wool. Those are the in in the insets on the top. Yeah, exactly. So just a little bit of a... clarification on what they mean by the two colors. yeah It's really neat. Those kind of twills are are complicated to make, so it's definitely a more advanced weaving technique, and it's really cool to see it on such an old piece of fabric like this. Too bad it they lost it. I bet they were very sad about it.
00:11:50
Speaker
all right Well, I guess with that, we hope that they you know't continue on with this work and really you know keep getting funding, because that's usually what stops work like this. But hopefully they keep getting funding, because I don't think the climate's going to warm anytime soon, and it's probably going to continue getting warmer and melting before it gets colder. So there's that. but yeah right Well, with that, we are going to move over to closer to where Rachel and I are. and by Well, not really, but closer to the United States anyway. We have been there recently-ish. We actually went real close to here yeah as we passed through Lower Michigan. We're going to go by Lower Michigan and learn a little bit about the oldest, at least the currently oldest, archaeology site in Michigan that was found just a few years ago with some recent discoveries. so We'll talk about that in a minute. and Back on the other side.
00:12:38
Speaker
Welcome back to The Archaeology Show, Episode 280. And this article is from Newsweek and a few other places called Prehistoric Native American Tools Reveal What They Ate at Great Lakes Camp.
Clovis Site Discoveries in Michigan
00:12:52
Speaker
I think they're kind of burying the lead there.
00:12:54
Speaker
We're just sort of giving the whole thing away and like the title. Well, yeah, but it's also like the oldest site found in Michigan and a Clovis site, something that had never been found in Michigan. Oh, so that was all new for Michigan. That was all new for Michigan. Yeah. It's like, you know, this is clearly not written by an archeologist. And to me, that is actually a lot more important than what they ate. Who cares?
00:13:18
Speaker
I mean, kind of, but we'll we'll get to it. Yeah. Well, anyway, this is found in the Great Lakes region of the United States of America. So, if you're not familiar with the USA, and there's a whole bunch of big lakes made by glaciers, and they're right in the middle, up top, near york Canada. Yeah. We share them with Canada, really. Yeah. Well, we do. Yeah. Some of them. Some of them we keep to ourselves, and some of them we share with Canada.
00:13:37
Speaker
so I think most of them we share with Canada, actually, except for maybe Michigan, yeah Lake Michigan. ah but We kind of share that, like an edge of it. I don't know. I don't think so. I think i think Michigan might fully enclose Lake Michigan, but you yeah. you Anyway. Anyway, the Belsen site they call it dates to about 13,000 years ago and is located in Southwest Michigan. yeah And it contains artifacts from the Clovis culture. Yes. And they were first reported on in a paper that was published in 2021. So more information coming out of this study, apparently. Yeah, they keep this site, not study. Yeah, they keep researching here and digging here. And this same team recently publishing in plus one has revealed new discoveries. The Clovis people likely returned annually to the site over several years. That's the new research. Yeah, which totally makes sense because these people were, you know, migratory, right? They followed game, they followed food, they followed the seasons and they had passed as they went on. So it would totally make sense that you would go back to somewhere that was protected and a place that, you know, you liked being at in the previous season. Why not? Right.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, and in anthropological circles, you kind of learn about this in sort of anthropology 101. It's called a seasonal round because they probably had other places they went to yeah in the year as well. yeah so And and the reason the reason for this is because they were likely following things like game and other things that they ate, right? So not only game, but, you know, flora.
00:15:13
Speaker
Plants they're probably running from snow at some point like they'd had enough of it time to move on Don't want to be here anymore basically the first snowbirds So that's why they ended up in Mexico at the Clovis site. They were snowbirds. It's perfect. I mean, that's the way we live right now currently, chasing 70, right? and Well, like I said, that's why they ended up in New Mexico at the Clovis typesite. Well, these exact people did? These exact people. okay They went down to New Mexico, founded the Clovis typesite. That's a big claim. So that's where they get their name, if you haven't heard us talk about this before, is Clovis, New Mexico is an actual place. Yes.
00:15:46
Speaker
That's the first place that this particular projectile point, spear point, if you will, was found. It's a very particular type of thing. It's got straight sides fitted onto the end of a spear. It's got what's called a flute down the end of it, which is just ah a really long, flat flake yeah taken out of it on both sides. Yeah, and it would have made it easy to haft it onto yeah whatever they were wielding it with. Yeah, well, typically a spear. Yeah, typically a spear. Yeah, they didn't have arrows yet. Yeah, it would have been too big and heavy for an arrow anyway. Yeah, it would have been. I just mean material-wise, it could have been whatever kind of material they were hafting it to. yeah to yeah Yeah, so anyway, that's where this was this was named for the place it was found. The actual site it was found out was called Blackwater Rob, but it was
00:16:31
Speaker
Found inside of a mastodon or a mammoth, one of the two. Something like that, yeah. One of the maf things, one of the big elephant looking things. so Anyway, it was, yeah, Clovis, New Mexico. But these points have been you know linked to what they just call Clovis culture because they haven't linked it to a particular you know Native American culture. they just They just call it all Clovis culture because of this point type. And it's all over North and South America.
00:16:54
Speaker
so Yeah, these were some of the earliest people that were in North and South America. And this was just the typical type of point that those people use. And and it it does make a connection between all of them, although there very certainly would have been regional differences among all the people.
00:17:11
Speaker
yeah Now, the problem with Clovis culture is that it's sort of incorrectly, I believe, makes it sound like it's a one culture of people fact that is populating across two continents during a couple thousand years' history in in the this hemisphere, yeah and taking this knowledge of this projectile point and just you know proliferating it across both continents, right? Right. Which is more than likely completely false. Yeah. These people were all very different. They had yeah lots of, did I mean, they were living in very different places in some cases. yeah So you can't assume that they were that similar, i but this lithic technology did spread among all the people or was developed independently. I think there's a lot of argument about that as well. So we're not going to get into that. But I mean, to get into it a little bit. I think you have to i think personally that there was a combination of the two because I think there's only so many ways to crack a stone to haft it on the end of a spear personally. But also, I think that A, it did spread a little bit. You know, people see something and they like it or people find something and they pick it up and go, that's cool, how do I make that? And then they try it and they make it and then it works, right? And so I think that those ideas can spread and they do spread because it works, right? You trade them and then you copy. You trade, you copy, yeah. yeah You learn and you and you do you do what works, right? yeah But I also think that it can be independently invented because nowadays, we've worked in so many different parts of the country and you see the same types of points. They might have small, different regional variations, but you see the same types of points with their same shapes and their same little ears and notches and corners and all that stuff. It's true. But there are a hundred different names for the same shape. There are. Because because now people give different names to things, right? but
00:19:00
Speaker
For some reason, Clovis got one name, and you know Folsom got one name, and some of these things got one name, and now it's Clovis culture. I guess there's less variation, maybe, back in the the earlier earlier times. It's so distinctive. but And it is very distinctive. It's very distinctive. So now now Michigan has Clovis site now, yeah and it's not the Belsen point, right? It's the Clovis point. It is. so anyway though Something significant here is this site, one of the significant things about it is it was under ice. The Wisconsin glaciation began around 100,000 to 75,000 years ago and was part of the most recent ice age that ended about 11,000 years ago. so These guys were like looking at a George R. R. Martin-esque wall of ice just to the north of them. right Yeah, it was creating the Great Lakes at the time. They had just pulled back and they're going, hey, that big area, that lake is getting a lot bigger, yeah that one right next to us. right It just keeps filling up. It just keeps getting deeper. What's happening? That valley we walked through to get here, what happened to it? I can't even see across it now. Right. so
00:20:06
Speaker
there's like When I was a kid, so ago anyway, but as a result, Michigan was completely covered in ice as well as the rest of the northern part of the continent. so But the ice had receded in some parts of southern Michigan by 13,000 years ago, of course, because they wouldn't be there otherwise. right And this site is thought of as one of the earliest archeological sites as a result. So as ice was melting, people were just like moving on in yeah because vegetation was growing back up and it was very fertile soil and animals were coming in and eating it and people were following and eating them. Yeah, exactly. And evidence suggests that the clothes people visited this site annually for at least three to five years, and it was probably in the summer. And I suppose they can tell that by probably the levels of hearth, hearth activity. That would be my guess anyway, because otherwise, how could you say specifically three to five years? What would you think on that?
00:20:56
Speaker
Probably, and I would imagine the hearts probably move around a little bit, or there's layers of them, or something like that, yeah. yes oh Yeah, something like that. Well, this was what I thought was one of the coolest things about this site, because it's not often that we get to do this kind of analysis. And also, many Clovis points that are known in this country were collected in the olden times.
00:21:18
Speaker
before this kind of analysis could be done. And that is protein analysis on the tools. And you can do this protein analysis to see what kind of things they were cutting with the tools. yeah And then that would give you an idea as to what they were eating, right? And you have to collect the tools in a certain way to preserve that data. And I think that we probably have lost that from older tools. And you know why?
00:21:44
Speaker
Why? Because archaeologists back in the day and some still today would just pick it up and lick it. Okay, they lick pottery, not tools, or bone. Maybe it's bone. Is it bone that you lick? I don't know. You lick bone and pottery to figure out what it is. I don't think people are licking stone tools, typically. I think they just lick stuff because they're like, hmm, archaeology. But they certainly were getting contaminated, right? If you have deli meat for lunch,
00:22:08
Speaker
Turkey, you have turkey meat in your sandwich and then you go touch a tool, you're transferring some of that to it and then it just corrupts the entire sample, right? does Those archaeologists that eat like a can of sardines for lunch, i feel like everything else sardines on it after lunch. That's so gross, nobody eats that, that's just mean. Oh, we know somebody. Well, okay. Yeah, so that's gross. But anyway, that would contaminate the sample. And so many older sites, you just can't do this kind of analysis. But we know now that we can do this. So yeah you know sites that are found today, you can protect these tools and then do this kind of analysis. So I'm not sure how much other evidence they have of the diet through the protein analysis of the tools. But I'm sure that archaeologists are looking out for that these days so that we can do that kind of work.
00:22:53
Speaker
Yeah, so some of the animals they were able to come up with, based on this analysis, was muskox, caribou, or deer. They kind of present the same way. yeah yeah Hair, or rabbits, and extinct peccary, which is a pig-like animal. You know what's not on that list?
00:23:10
Speaker
pamphi or Mastodon, right? Which is interesting because... They might have just been up in that area. They might not have been in that area. That could be happenstance. We do know that Clovis points were used to kill them because there's many kill sites that have Clovis points in them. A lot of Clovis points have been found in them. Yes, exactly. So we know for sure that they were doing it, but what is interesting about this is that it just again shows that Clovis people didn't necessarily only hunt big game.
00:23:36
Speaker
they They would adapt to what was available to them. And in this particular area, it must have been those smaller animals. Although, I mean, smaller, when we're talking about a muskox or a caribou, those are still pretty big animals. Pretty good test. Yeah. Yeah. I probably still had to go through some efforts to get those, to take one of those down, but still.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah. And they probably also ate plants and things like that as well, because how could you not? I mean, you're going to eat things that are easy to eat and aren't going to kill you. Yeah, exactly. That's how we find out how plants don't kill you. Especially if this was a summertime camp. That's when all the the green veggie things are alive. So um yeah they must have been eating veggies, too. But those the evidence of those did not survive in this particular case.
00:24:16
Speaker
I can imagine just sitting out there going, ugh, salad. Ooh, caribou. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I get it. They probably were eating like nuts and things too. yeah I wonder if they can do analysis for that kind of food. Although I guess you don't really cut those with a knife, do you? Why would you cut ah a nut with a knife?
00:24:36
Speaker
Well, you'd have to crush them sometimes with other rocks. yeah so Yeah, maybe. So they probably wouldn't show up on there. Right. Anyway, the site is positioned over a river channel. I have some comments about that with good views where people likely watched herbivores crossing the spring where they would kill and eat them. So they would just have good good visibility. Yeah. now That's what the article said, positioned over a river channel. We don't really have a picture of that necessarily. No, not exactly. But I'm wondering, is the site currently positioned over a river channel? And was it positioned over a river channel? Because this area of Michigan has a lot of soil. I don't know how deep the bedrock is, but typically in these in these glacial areas, there's a lot of glacial till, there's a lot of soil, there's a lot of area like that. So rivers would be moving around a lot. They just they just move around a lot. Rivers do. So I'm wondering where the river was 13,000 years ago. I mean, they must have evidence that it was here because that is something that archaeologists are well aware of. so Whoever's doing this work knows where they were in proximity just to the river. It just is positioned and not was positioned. If it is positioned now, what are the chances it was positioned there 13,000 years ago? I mean, I hear you. That might just be bad wording by the journalists, though. unless it's moved and moved and moved, and now it's moved back. You know what I mean? And it currently is positioned and was positioned, which is obviously possible, because a lot of times rivers will contain themselves within an area. Maybe because of the bedrock, the river is contained within an area that has always been suited to this area, you know which is totally possible. So anyway, a smaller game would have been hunted more opportunistically, of course. A larger a game would have been would have been followed. so yeah Yeah. I mean, that makes sense, right obviously.
00:26:18
Speaker
okay so While these guys were over there hunting game, people over in Poland were trying to keep vampire children from coming back from the dead. We'll talk about that on the other back of the side of the break.
00:26:31
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 280 of The Archaeology Show, and now it's time for more vampires.
Medieval Anti-Vampire Burial Practices
00:26:39
Speaker
I know, I love this. And we did a whole episode on like vampires and vampire burials and vampire lore that led to vampire burials back in the day last year for Halloween. So we'll try to find that episode and and link to it because it was fun. It was fun. I did not know how much vampire stuff that you can find in the archeology record just because of you know suspicious ideas people had in the past. Not suspicious. That's not the right word. but
00:27:07
Speaker
Just different folklore notions people had in the past. Yeah, well, they took it pretty seriously, apparently. They shared it in this case. Yeah, well, this article is called, Medieval Vampire Child Burial Used Extreme Measures to Keep Dead in Grave, and it's also from Newsweek. So, a site on Gora Chelmska, which is a ridge near Cozolin in northwestern Poland, a team have made an interesting discovery.
00:27:35
Speaker
Yes, the skeletons of two children have been found without coffins. No coffins. You think a coffin would at least contain them a little more. Yeah, that is interesting. Maybe it's a like... Coffins are only reserved for for christian religious people. Yeah, yeah and and and you were a vampire, so therefore you don't get a coffin? Maybe. I don't know. I feel like if i if you could put a vampire in a coffin, you could just like really strap that thing down. I mean, coffins are their beds, right? Yeah, well... I mean, that's true. Depending on which story you're reading. but I know. But like you could also like nail the crap out of a coffin. You can. That's true. That's true. So so both of the skeletons of these children were laid on their backs with their skulls facing west. Not west. I mean, I don't know why that matters for a vampire. I don't know.
00:28:23
Speaker
Well, i mean facing east in some cultures is often like towards Jerusalem, but not in Poland. Facing east is China and Poland. Well, it could be the surprising sunsetting something. but Right, right, right.
00:28:37
Speaker
So these two were dated to the 13th century based on associated pottery shirts. And there's no other known cemeteries in this area, which I also thought was interesting because usually, not usually, but often you find these types of graves outside of the bounds of a of a cemetery where, you know, regular Christians would be buried. So, but these are just sort of off on their own, it sounds like.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah. But that just means maybe we haven't found another cemetery. so It's true. It's true. But this is only medieval. It's 13th century. It's not even that long ago. so Like not comparatively speaking in the archeology record, but yeah yeah. One of the greys displays anti-vampire characteristics, which that also surprises me that only one of them does. They're both kind of buried there. Yeah. Were they were they buried together together or were they found in their own separate burials near each other? This is like the whole journalism versus versus paper thing, yeah like academic paper. This is just a journalistic report of a cool thing, yeah not the actual like academic paper.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, one of the graves displays what they call anti-vampire characteristics. And it's known as a revenant grave, technically. Revenant is the term for that. yeah And of course, it's in the folklore of several cultures, as we mentioned. yeah Yeah, we'll definitely link back to that old episode, because we kind of went in detail about the different folklore, the origins, and that kind of stuff.
00:29:59
Speaker
The term revenant refers to a person who comes back from the dead as a spirit or reanimated corpse to terrorize the living. I'm like really specifically to terrorize living or just like to live a fancy life with a velvet jacket. That's what vampires have become. But I think the way it started, if I remember correctly from the last time we talked about this, is like often a disease would like tear through a town, and they they just needed a reason or an explanation. So like the first person to get it became the the one who caused it all. right They had to blame somebody, so they just blamed the first person. They became the revenant who came out of their graves and then passed this disease along or terrorized the rest of the village.
00:30:40
Speaker
so um Not necessarily fair, but it right was how they mentally handled that situation. Grades like this have dated back thousands of years and are found all across Europe because probably as long as people have been living in bigger groups and disease and things like this have been taking hold, that's probably as long as this is dated to. yeah You always need someone to blame. Yeah, and I kind of get it, right? It's easier to blame the dead than the living, right? like they're They are already dead, and at least they're not doing terrible things to somebody who's still alive. you know Sure, blame the dead if that makes you feel better about the situation. It's probably a fundamental lack of understanding, too,
00:31:20
Speaker
Disease and death you know somebody somebody may have Thought to have been died especially like in bed or something like that or maybe they actually put them in about the ground But they just had either were unconscious had a low heart rate something like that yeah And then you know started banging on their coffin or you know banging on the door Literally coming out of the dirt or something like that, but actually weren't dead right right you know they're just very sick or something like that and I You know, that's how these things come around. So like I said fundamental misunderstanding of medicine. Yeah, definitely Yeah, yeah, but anyway people have taken various precautions to prevent the dead from rising which is Terrific to think that you're possibly barely alive and possibly even conscious of something Most probably most of these people were actually dead. These things happened. Of course. Yeah Yeah, they were. And not actually just sick and kind of unconscious? Oh, I doubt they were. They were dead. I mean, people weren't that monstrous, not even in a place in time where they didn't understand disease, right? Not usually, anyway. But some of these things included placing large stones on the legs or piercing the body with a lance to fix it to the ground. I love these, because if somebody gets reanimated and they're essentially immortal, I mean, how long is that actually going to stop them? Right.
00:32:35
Speaker
probably not mean Maybe a little bit, but not forever. Yeah, another one that I thought was really kind of funny was burying them face down. So when they reanimate and just start digging, yeah they just keep getting deeper and deeper and deeper. yeah like Well, again, eventually, let's just come out the other side. yeah Well, no, not that exactly, but I don't know that it will fool them for very long, but hey, maybe it will. You got to do what you got to do to try to protect your living family, right? Yeah. but there is There does seem to be one surefire way to maybe stop them from coming back. You would think, right? Maybe, but you know they are dead, so they could do magical things. Yes.
00:33:12
Speaker
In this case, one of the recently discovered children had its head removed from its torso completely. yeah And if I remember correctly, one of the burials we talked about last year also was a head removal situation with the leg leg down between or with the head down between the legs or whatever. In this case, the skull was just placed face down and then they put stones on top of the torso, I guess, by separating the head and then putting stones on the torso that would somehow stop the... Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
the child from coming back as a vampire. yeah The burial also appears to have been marked by two pillars because they saw postholes when they were digging. so and For anybody, if we haven't talked about this before, when you are doing an excavation, you can actually see evidence of where wooden posts were in the ground. and yeah Even if the wood is gone, right the wood Essentially, I don't want to say turns into dirt, but it kind of turns into dirt. Well, it does. It starts decomposing, and the dirt where it was is darker because it's stained by the decomposition of the wood that was there originally. It's really cool. yeah You can literally excavate but but post holes, and they call them post molds. Yeah, and they'll be perfectly circular. yeah It's very clear when you're excavating one of those. They'll be the shape of the post. Oh, yeah, post of whatever the post was. Yeah, so usually circular because you know yeah trees.
00:34:34
Speaker
It turns out, well, somebody cut it mean leg perfectly circular. I mean, how good was the woodsmith, the lumberjack? Well, they were usually circular. But anyway. Anyway. Yeah, so I wonder why they would be marking it. Was it like a don't come near here, there might be a vampire marking, do you think? Could have been.
00:34:53
Speaker
Another thing that's missing from this article is like the the context more context around these barr bigger contexts. like Are they near a village? We know it's not associated with another cemetery, but are we near a village? And this is like they put up some kind of marking using these post holes to to stop people from coming over there or or what? you know like If it's out in the middle of nowhere, what's the point? Yeah. yeah Hard to say. the Anyway, these were all common techniques for barriers of what people thought were demons in some cultures. yeah so Anyway, they removed all this, which I think was probably you know not super smart. Probably should have just reburied it and put some more rocks on top of it. Yeah, now the kid's going to be a vampire. Good job, guys. yeah Better get my steak out. know
00:35:37
Speaker
but but But anyway, they removed it and it's waiting for their analysis. yeah So we'll see. Hopefully find out more. Maybe they'll get a an actual you know academic study out, which will give more details as to the actual context, because I'm always interested in that kind of stuff. yeah Archaeology is never just the one thing. It's the bigger picture around the thing yeah that really tells you so much more about it. and with journalism, like they do very much get focused on the thing and not the overall picture, which I like the picture. Yes, pictures are good. Pictures are good. I'm simple. Draw me a picture. Draw me a word picture. It's called active. I cannot with the word pictures.
00:36:24
Speaker
Anyway. Anyway. All right. Well, with that, we actually have some interesting episodes coming up here in the future. We've got a couple of interview-based episodes. And one of them is a little bit of a promo for the Archios Film Festival coming up, which you may have seen in our socials. We're promoting the trailer for it, because we are doing some interviews with some of the filmmakers. Yeah, super exciting. Yeah, that's coming up in October, actually. And there is some in person. The film festival is. The film festival is. Yes.
00:36:52
Speaker
Actually there's a YouTube short and I think it's also on our Instagram. So if you go check out arc pod net on YouTube and on our Instagram, you can see the trailer for that. But keep, keep an eye out for that because that's coming up in mid-October and it's a virtual film festival. So, and it's free. Yeah. And there's, we've actually seen a number of the short films and you can just log in and you have ah a week because it's, you know, it's all proprietary films. So you don't have forever, but you have a week to go actually watch some of these. so And there's some long form ones as well, which we haven't actually watched yet. We're going to do that, but yeah when it comes out, but the short ones are anywhere from six, seven minutes to, you know, 20, 25 minutes. A lot of the ones we've seen are really well done. Oh yeah. So great. Yeah. yep
00:37:34
Speaker
But definitely check that out. It's nice to see a virtual film festival. You can watch it from anywhere in the world. Definitely. So anyway, all archeology and kind of history focused. So yeah anyway, with that, look out for more information coming on that. And with that, we will see you
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:37:48
Speaker
next time. Bye.
00:37:56
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment in and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. Music for this show is called, I Wish You Would Look, from the band C Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:38:20
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.