Medieval girl buried face down with bound ankles, likely so she couldn't 'return' from the grave

[admin]

The medieval remains of a 15-year-old girl reveal that she was buried face down and with bound ankles at the edge of a settlement.

Medieval girl buried face down with bound ankles, likely so she couldn't 'return' from the grave : Read more

 

[void]

Honest opinion, nothing more... She should have stayed a virgin, maybe... She had "bound ankles" - means she should've kept them closed. "face down" - she was buried in shame and disgrace after she was executed... I don't even want to think how they buried the boy! ...Medieval times, meh... catholic church driven madness, ubsurdities and superstitions...

 

[playmate phettiy]

In my opinion she was brought there because she was trying to keep something out of the village and to prove that they were already in that thought they built the gate for her to recognize that they didn't need her doing what she was doing to keep people out of the village which was most likely having sex with an animal like a snake.

 

[B!tschSlayer]

Honest opinion, nothing more... She should have stayed a virgin, maybe... She had "bound ankles" - means she should've kept them closed. "face down" - she was buried in shame and disgrace after she was executed... I don't even want to think how they buried the boy! ...Medieval times, meh... catholic church driven madness, ubsurdities and superstitions...

Leave your disgusting, racist, and anti-science comments out of an education site.... You are actually making up bs as you go along and not all of us were even catholic, there were pagans and even atheists in early medieval England as well as better actual scientists superior to you. I love my ancestors and you clearly hate white people. Shame and humiliation on YOU!!!

 

[B!tschSlayer]

Honest opinion, nothing more... She should have stayed a virgin, maybe... She had "bound ankles" - means she should've kept them closed. "face down" - she was buried in shame and disgrace after she was executed... I don't even want to think how they buried the boy! ...Medieval times, meh... catholic church driven madness, ubsurdities and superstitions...

You won't even reply back because you know what a sack-o-s you are!!🤡💩

 

[Isi]

OK, leaving aside the modernist anxieties around sex, race, and gender-appropriate behavior; reflecting that people in this region didn't get murderously tense about premarital or extramarital sex until sexually-transmitted diseases had done a number on Victorian-era peoples, a thousand years later; and that being sexually active was, to the contrary, an important social & survival characteristic, unlike now & unlike Northern Med & some (not all) Asian areas back then...

Securing the feet is a very old method of keeping a dead person's spirit in place, literally preventing the dead from walking. Burial face-down is traditionally meant to confuse the ghost so they can't find the living, based on the understanding that our eyes are on the front of our heads and the dead aren't flexible or clever.

These people *murdered and secured* this person (who was considered an adult at the time) and dismantled & abandoned their settlement. This is *so bad.* I mean, we fuss about having to pack our stuff up, but we don't have to take down our houses when we move!

There were so many horrible things going on at this point -- invasions, Viking raids (which were a lot more horrible and a lot less sexy than TV might make you think), drought, floods, and absolutely relentless famine; and Mercia was right in the thick of it -- that it looks like something horrible hit the village and they picked her as a scapegoat.
* Maybe she brought a virulent illness; plague existed in an early form then.
* Maybe she was already an outcast, and convenient to blame.
* Maybe she told raiders where to find her village in an outburst of adolescent angst, and reported back in a fit of remorse or was found out. Traitors are never popular at home.
* Maybe she was just a mean, ghastly person, seen as capable of great evil. Some people are!

Given the times and the situation, the villagers went to extreme lengths to remove themselves and secure that person to that spot after death. Something awful happened and they felt justified in laying the blame on her, before they took down the village and disappeared. I'd be fascinated to find out why.