Unusual funerary behaviour is now an exciting area of research in Central and Western European archaeology. In Poland, since the first half of the twentieth century, finds of atypical or deviant burials have been almost exclusively interpreted as evidence for so-called 'anti-vampire' practices, intended to prevent the dead from rising, haunting and hurting the living. In the last decade or so, new attempts have been made, especially in the UK, to develop more sophisticated understandings of deviant burials, and to perceive them not only in the context of popular superstition, but also with regard to judicial practices. Inspired by these new developments, this paper offers a range of new interpretations of deviant burials from early medieval Poland with a focus on burials where people were buried in a prone position, decapitated or covered with stones.
This article offers a new perspective on a diverse corpus of high-status Western Slavic objects from the domain of the Piast dynasty in Poland, dated between the tenth and eleventh centuries ad. It is proposed that the lavish zoomorphic decorations, often depicting snakes, found on jewellery, weapons, and equestrian equipment reflected Western Slavic pre-Christian religious ideas and served as material markers of elite identity. The results of this study lead to a more nuanced understanding of Western Slavic worldviews and their material expressions, paving the way for new investigations into cultural interactions both within and beyond the Slavic homelands.
Nadrzędnym celem artykułu jest analiza podstaw źródłowych oraz interpretacyjnych dotyczących tzw. masek z Opola. Przedmioty te na stałe weszły do studiów nad religią przedchrześcijańską Słowian Zachodnich, szybko osiągając status ikonicznych. Tym, co wzbudza zaskoczenie, jest widoczna w literaturze, w zasadzie bezkrytyczna akceptacja identyfikacji obu omawianych przedmiotów, jaką ponad półwiecze temu zaproponowała Helena Cehak-Hołubowiczowa. Żaden z późniejszych autorów nie podjął się polemiki z tymi ustaleniami, co w konsekwencji doprowadziło do ugruntowania badawczego paradygmatu. Maski z Opola stały się również podstawą do rozwijania rozmaitych hipotez dotyczących pogańskich form obrzędowości na ziemiach polskich we wczesnym średniowieczu. W prezentowanym tekście podjęto próbę rewizji dotychczasowych interpretacji oraz krytyki budowanych na jej fundamencie hipotez.
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