Article content

Inside a miniature tomb, in the middle of what used to be a sprawling Roman villa, is the skeleton of a 10-year-old child who died more than 1,500 years ago. It is on its side, its mouth agape and stuffed with a limestone rock about the size of a big egg.

Researchers believe the child, whose gender is still unknown, died after a deadly malaria outbreak afflicted the fifth-century community that once inhabited this tiny medieval town on a hill about 60 miles north of Rome. The stone had teeth marks, leading archaeologists to believe it had been deliberately inserted into the child’s mouth after death – a bizarre, ancient practice to keep the child from rising from the dead and spreading the disease.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Archaeologists find 'vampire burial' site of a child feared capable of rising from the dead Back to video

Photo by David Pickel/Stanford University

Archaeologists have dubbed these types of burials “vampire burials.” Locals in the Italian town of Lugnano in Teverina call it the “Vampire of Lugnano.”

“We know that this kind of unusual treatment usually indicates a fear of the undead, specifically, a fear that the dead might come back from the grave to continue to spread diseases to the living . . . Placing the stone in the child’s mouth is a literal or symbolic way of incapacitating them,” said Jordan Wilson, a bioarchaeologist and a University of Arizona doctoral student who was part of the team that unearthed the remains in the summer.