Lugnano child burial

At Lugnano in Teverina, a Roman-era cemetery for infants and children produced burials in which the bodies had been weighed down or had stones set in their mouths. The excavators interpret these as steps taken against the dead rising. The graves are far older than any written vampire tradition. They suggest that fear of the returning corpse, and the physical means of preventing it, were already present in late antique Italy.1