This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In 2022, excavations at a cemetery in Pień, Poland, led by researchers from the Institute of Archaeology at Nicolaus Copernicus University, led to a mysterious discovery. In what they call Grave 75, they uncovered the 400-year-old remains of a young adult woman buried in a very unusual and unsettling way.
A curved iron sickle was placed directly over her neck, with its blade pointing toward her throat, while a triangular iron padlock was attached to the big toe of her left foot. A study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports pieced together archaeological and chemical clues to reconstruct the woman's life, her death and the historical context for why she was buried so strangely. A closer examination of her remains exposed tiny metallic threads near her skull, made of pure silver and gold-gilded wire from a luxurious silk headwear cap.
These materials were incredibly expensive in the 17th century, suggesting she belonged to a wealthy family. This high-class woman was likely highly feared, given the harsh realities and superstitious fears of 1600s Poland. The soil inside was messy and mixed, indicating someone dug up her grave before her body had fully decomposed, while her joints were still held together by soft tissue.
Researchers connect these disturbances to someone pulling her left arm toward the northeast and placing a sickle into the grave with its blade angled toward her, possibly to keep her from rising again. The padlock and sickle in the grave were consistent with anti-demonic rituals, practices meant to shield the living from the dead. In the 17th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, disease, famine and other misfortunes could devastate communities, and the dead became convenient scapegoats for shifting blame.
Every once in a while, an archaeologist's excavation tool strikes a grave arranged in a way that signals just how deeply the living community feared the deceased. These are often called "vampiric" or "anti-vampiric" graves, where the dead were subjected to specific measures intended to prevent them from rising as vampires, including decapitation, heavy stones placed on the body or iron stakes. Several hundred anti-vampiric graves have turned up across Central and Southeastern Europe, spanning the post-medieval period to modern times.
Yet graves from the 16th to 18th centuries, like Grave 75, get very little attention in archaeological writing. In this study, the researchers took a closer look at the 17th-century grave, seeking to understand its vampiric treatment through scientific evidence rather than relying on folklore alone. They began by carefully excavating and documenting the grave, skeleton, sickle, padlock and surviving textile fragments.
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