(Image: D. Weiss)
What do you do if the dead won't stay dead? Greek settlers in the colony of Kamarina in Sicily may have addressed that problem in two graves uncovered by archaeologists in the 1980s. The bodies were weighed down with heavy pottery fragments--as though to prevent the bodies from rising up. Live Science reports on the findings of archaeologist Carrie Sulosky Weaver:
For her book, Sulosky Weaver "needed to understand why these individuals would be buried in a different manner," she told Live Science in an email, during a dig in Turkey.
One grave held the skeletal remains of an adult of unknown sex whose teeth had lines of arrested growth — a sign of serious malnutrition or illness, Sulosky Weaver said. The head and feet of the person were covered with "large amphora fragments… a large, two-handled ceramic vessel that was typically used for storing liquids," she wrote in the article.
The heavy amphora fragments "were presumably intended to pin the individual to the grave and prevent it from seeing or rising," she added.
Another grave contains the skeleton of a child, likely age 8 to 13. The skeleton didn't have any signs of disease, but five large stones were placed on top of it, possibly to stop a revenant from leaving the grave, Sulosky Weaver said.
-via Jonah Goldberg