Post by Joanna on Apr 19, 2014 15:44:21 GMT -5
Iron Age woman had feet chopped off to prevent her becoming one of 'the walking dead'
Zombies might be something you associate with modern popular culture. But for our ancestors in the Iron Age, it appears they too were fearful of “the walking dead.”
A female skeleton found in Wiltshire has all the signs of a ritual burial designed to stop her rising from the ground. And alongside her were found the remains of a child aged ten and two men with sword wounds.
“I think this cemetery is marked for difficult deaths where people were probably worried about the circumstances in which they’ve died,” Dr Melanie Giles, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Manchester, says.
Such burials have been known to be performed where the local community were frightened by the nature of the death. This could be death caused by childbirth, violent wounding or illness. In such circumstances, locals were afraid that the bodies could rise from the dead and haunt their community. So, to prevent such an occurrence they would sometimes chop off the feet of a body after its death so it could not walk. They would also leave food offerings for the undead to prevent them rising.
“Chopping off whole feet is something done after death to stop them haunting you,” explains Dr Giles. “It looks like a sort of rite designed to prevent her rising and becoming a member of the walking dead.”
The goats and sheep, meanwhile, are common funeral offerings. They are often placed on the head or upper chest to appease the spirit and send it off with food to the afterlife.
But the exact circumstances behind the deaths of the individuals will likely remain somewhat of a mystery.
“It’s the clustering of these bodies that is fascinating,” says Dr Giles. “It looks as if everybody in that group died in an untimely way.”
Iron Age Burials: The Varied Rituals Found in Britain. The Iron Age in Britain was a period in history that began around 700 BC and ended with the Roman invasion in AD 43. Burial practices were extremely varied. In some regions, such as the South, formal burials were rare, with only a small number of adult burials known from pits inside hill forts and other settlements.
Finds of bone fragments on many sites have led to the suggestion that the majority of the population in this region were disposed of by “excarnation” – the deliberate exposure of the corpse.
In the South West and West, bodies were sometimes interred in small stone coffins, known as “cists.” In East Yorkshire, large formal cemeteries including burials with cart and horse equipment have been discovered.
Bog bodies show evidence of a violent death, and in the cases of Lindow Man from Lindow Moss in Cheshire and the recent Irish discoveries at Clonycavan and Croghan, a possible ritual or sacrificial killing has been suggested. Many bog bodies show evidence of a violent death, and possible ritual or sacrificial killing The placing of these individuals in wet locations may also link with the later prehistoric ritual practice of depositing metalwork in rivers, lakes and bogs.
Sources: The Daily Mail, April 10, 2014, and BBC News.