Face Down: The Phenomenon of Prone Burial in Early Medieval Poland

• Authors: Leszek Gardeła

Title variants

PL

Odwróceni. Fenomen pochówków na brzuchu w Polsce wczesnośredniowiecznej

• Languages of publication: EN PL

Abstracts

EN

This paper examines the phenomenon of prone burial in early medieval Poland in the period between the 10th and 13th centuries. Among individuals treated this way were mainly adult men, but several examples of prone burials of females have also been discovered. Over the years prone burials from Poland have been interpreted by many archaeologists in the light of so-called ‘antivampire’ practices which were allegedly intended to protect the society against the living dead. By adopting an intercultural perspective, this article seeks to nuance these one-sided views and attempts to demonstrate that prone burials may have held a much wider range of meanings. It is argued that they may have been burials of criminals or various social deviants and that in some instances they could have perhaps signalled a religious and post-mortem act of penance

Keywords

EN

atypical burials; Poland; prone burials; Slavs; vampires

• Publisher: Institute of Archaeology Rzeszów University, Fundacja Rzeszowskiego Ośrodka Archeologicznego
• Journal: Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 10
• Pages: 99–136

Dates

published

2015

Contributors

author

Leszek Gardeła

• Institute of Archaeology, University of Rzeszów, Moniuszki 10 St., 35-015 Rzeszów, Poland