A recently announced archaeological find in Ireland indicates that the association between epidemic diseases and the undead is not a recent development.
Archaeologists from the Institute of Technology in Sligo, Ireland and the University of St. Louis excavated, from 2005 to 2009, a burial site dating from the eighth through fifteenth centuries at Killeasheen, County Roscommon, Ireland. Recently they released some of their findings concerning the 137 skeletons so far excavated at the site, including two so-called "deviant burials" from the eighth century. The two adult males were found buried alongside each other but had apparently been interred at different times in unrelated incidents. Both skulls had large stones in their mouths, which appear to have been placed there deliberately at the time of burial (Discovery News, IT Sligo). Placement of heavy objects such as bricks or stones in the mouth is a well-documented burial treatment for those considered at risk of returning as hungry and dangerous undead, though until the latter part of the twentieth century, the evidence for the practice was written rather than archaeological (Discovery News, IT Sligo, National Geographic News).
The younger of the two men "had an even larger stone wedged quite violently into his mouth so that his jaws were almost dislocated," according to Chris Read of IT Sligo. Such application of force seems indicative of strong emotion or motivation- fear, anger, or sheer grim determination. What could so strongly motivate someone to thrust a large stone into the mouth of a corpse with such force? Researchers have reason to believe the answer is self-defense. The two men may have been suspected of being revenants.
A revenant, according to Judyth A. McLeod, author of Vampires: A Bite-Sized History, is a medieval form of "wandering undead, ghouls, creatures of the dark, often but not always blood-sucking, and widely believed to spread the plague as well as attack the living." "Revenant" was a more general term, as the distinction between more specific types of undead with unique characteristics did not arise until later in the medieval period; both zombies and vampires, as well as the less commonly referenced ghouls, originated in beliefs about revenants. Dr. Dorothy King of PhDiva suggests that because of how they were buried and where they were found (far from the eastern European origin of the vampire legend) these two individuals are most likely "Zombies in the modern parlance."
In the modern parlance, zombies are usually portrayed as plague victims themselves, mindlessly driven to spread the contagion. In medieval Europe, as now, popular culture linked the risen dead with the spread of epidemic disease. Germs would not even be proposed as a cause of disease until 1546, and germ theory would not be widely accepted until the nineteenth century, so folk explanations were the only means available to most of Europe's population to understand and attempt to combat the plagues that intermittently ravaged the continent for much of the Middle Ages. The dead were frequently blamed for the spread of plague and other misfortunes that befell the living; many of those believed to be likely to return from the grave were societal outsiders in some way, or those who had died in particularly unpleasant or undignified ways, who may have borne a grudge against the living community (McLeod, PhDiva).
In some cases, the undead spread contagion by biting- a common feature of both zombie and vampire legends- and in others the undead spread the plague "magically" by chewing on his shroud (Discovery News, National Geographic News), which may be an example of sympathetic magic in which the shroud already within reach of the corpse's teeth replaces the flesh of the living. The dead could also spread plague by the passage of their rotting and diseased forms through the air at night; in the case of one medieval English revenant, "it was concluded that 'the atmosphere, infected and corrupted by the constant whirlings through it of the pestiferous corpse, would engender disease and death to a great extent" (McLeod). The latter explanation seems to venture closer to an understanding that decomposing corpses, especially those infected with disease-causing bacteria, can spread disease themselves, a realization which eventually led to sanitary practices that helped mitigate the effects of plague outbreaks.
Action had to be taken to prevent the spread of plague, attacks on the living, and general disruption of the natural order of things (which dictates that the dead should remain politely in their graves). Methods vary and include binding of the wrists and ankles in a face-down burial, beheading the corpse and stuffing the mouth with rocks and dirt, dismembering and burning the corpse, and simply stuffing a large stone into the mouth (McLeod, PhDiva). A large stone in one's mouth should prevent biting or chewing. It may also have acted as a spiritual barrier preventing the return of the deceased at all, given that "the mouth was seen as a key part of the body for such a transformation" according to Read, the orifice through which the spirit left the body and could perhaps return to it (Discovery News). Such focus on the mouth in early undead folklore may explain why the zombies, ghouls, and vampires that eventually developed from those medieval revenants are so defined by biting and consuming the living.
The archaeological team at Killeasheen estimates that the site may contain approximately three thousand more burials (Discovery News, IT Sligo), so perhaps it will yield additional insight into attempts to restrain the living dead.
DISCLAIMER: The author does not encourage any reader or member of the public to get close enough to a zombie or suspected zombie to insert any object into its mouth. Any attempt to replicate zombie neutralization techniques discussed in this article is strictly at your own risk.
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