Drawsko vampire burials in Poland: Trap the dead or protect them?

Source trail

Claim → sources → boundary

Original research

Burial evidence

In their 2015 study, Buried with sickles, Marek Polcyn and Elżbieta Gajda describe five sickle burials at Drawsko in north-west Poland. Four had blades at the throat; the fifth had a sickle across the pelvis. They interpret the objects as potentially restraining the dead and protecting them from evil forces.

Original research

Isotope evidence

These are two original studies of the same cemetery, not separate discoveries that independently prove one explanation. Polcyn is an author on both. The later paper draws on the earlier isotope results.

A sickle across a dead person's throat makes it easy to imagine what the mourners feared. The Drawsko vampire burials in Poland are harder to explain once you look beyond the blade. The people buried with sickles lay among other members of their community, in graves that otherwise followed the cemetery's usual pattern.

These are early-modern graves: the 2014 PLOS ONE study dates the cemetery to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In their 2015 study, Buried with sickles, Marek Polcyn and Elżbieta Gajda describe five sickle burials at Drawsko in north-west Poland. Four had blades at the throat; the fifth had a sickle across the pelvis. They interpret the objects as potentially restraining the dead and protecting them from evil forces.

That leaves a less comfortable question than a vampire headline usually allows: was the blade meant to keep something in the grave, keep something away from it, or do both?

What do the Drawsko vampire burials actually show?

The sickles and their positions are documented archaeological finds. Their purpose is an interpretation. The 2015 authors prefer “anti-demonic” to “vampire” burials, while a 2014 PLOS ONE study by Lesley A. Gregoricka and colleagues uses a vampire framework to test whether unusually buried people were migrants. The tested individuals had strontium isotope values compatible with local origins. Neither study establishes a particular mourner's intention, a cause of death, or the existence of vampires.

These are two original studies of the same cemetery, not separate discoveries that independently prove one explanation. Polcyn is an author on both. The later paper draws on the earlier isotope results.

Why does the rest of the grave matter?

The 2015 grave descriptions and cemetery plan give the blade a setting. The sickle graves were in different parts of the cemetery and shared the alignment of other graves. The authors describe coffin outlines and ordinary burial arrangements alongside the unusual objects. Their conclusion stresses that the bodies had not been desecrated and the graves had not been reopened.

Those details complicate the idea that these people were simply expelled from the community in death. Polcyn and Gajda argue that burial among the other dead, according to customary Christian practice, counts against treating them as social outcasts. It does not tell us that every neighbour welcomed them in life. It shows why the sickle alone cannot carry the whole explanation.

The differences between individual graves matter too. In the paper's description of grave 60/2010, the sickle lay across a woman's hips, while a stone lay on her throat. Figures 5 and 6 document that arrangement. Calling every example a “sickle across the neck” loses part of the evidence before interpretation has even begun.

An object also cannot identify a person's occupation by itself. The authors consider the suggestion that a sickle marked agricultural work, but reject it for Drawsko because sickle burials were so scarce relative to farming's importance. That is an argument about the pattern across the cemetery, rather than a conclusion drawn from the appearance of one tool.

Was the sickle meant to trap the dead or protect them?

Polcyn and Gajda discuss both possibilities. A cutting edge at the throat could express confinement: the dead should remain in the grave. The same iron tool could, in their interpretation, protect the deceased against evil forces or prevent the soul from becoming demonic.

Protection and restraint therefore need not be rival explanations. The person arranging a burial could have wanted the deceased to rest safely and wanted the living to remain safe as well. That is a way to understand the authors' argument, not a recovered statement from a funeral.

The interpretation and conclusion of the 2015 paper draw on comparisons with other burials and on folk demonology. Those comparisons supply possible meanings. They do not turn later accounts of belief into eyewitness testimony about these particular graves.

This is why the authors deliberately reject the narrower revenant, or vampire, label. In the belief system they discuss, a vampire was only one possible kind of demonic being. “Anti-demonic” leaves room for a wider set of concerns. It is still their interpretation of the burial practice, not a label written by the mourners.

Replacing “they feared a vampire” with “they were definitely protecting a loved one” would repeat the same mistake. The kinder story is not automatically the better-supported one.

What can teeth tell us about the people buried there?

The 2014 study's methods and results address a narrower question: were the people given unusual burial treatment non-local migrants?

The researchers measured strontium isotope ratios in tooth enamel from 60 people. Enamel forms during childhood, and its chemistry can be compared with a local reference range to investigate childhood residence. The study used modern local animals to help establish that range and also examined an alternative baseline derived from the human sample.

The counts need care. The paper discusses six unusual burials, but its results report isotope measurements for five. One individual could not be sampled because of tooth loss before death. The 2015 paper's five sickle burials are a different count again: that paper focuses specifically on graves containing sickles, rather than the broader category of unusual burial treatment.

All five tested individuals in the unusual-burial group had values compatible with the local range. That finding weakens the proposed explanation that they received this treatment because they had migrated from a geologically different area.

It does not establish that they spent their entire lives in Drawsko. The 2014 discussion acknowledges overlapping strontium values across regions, which can conceal migration. The local baseline also has limitations: the animal samples were modern, not animals recovered from the cemetery's period.

Nor can local-compatible teeth establish social acceptance. Someone could grow up nearby and still be treated as different for reasons a chemical test cannot recover. Residence, identity and reputation are not interchangeable questions.

Did an epidemic explain the burials?

Cholera appears in the 2014 paper as a possible explanation, not a diagnosis. The authors suggest that fear surrounding an epidemic might help explain why particular people received unusual treatment. Their conclusion explicitly says it is unclear whether this was the case at Drawsko.

The 2014 discussion also questions the idea of an epidemic cemetery. It reports an attritional mortality profile, consistent with deaths accumulating over time rather than a catastrophic event, and says a separate epidemic cemetery was likely unnecessary for a small settlement. It leaves open the possibility that some people who died during outbreaks were buried in the communal cemetery.

The papers still describe burial haste differently. The 2014 authors suggest that poorly fitted coffins might indicate rushed interment. The 2015 account of the site explicitly rejects the epidemic-cemetery explanation, reporting no evidence of mass graves or hasty burials. This is not a simple reversal of an earlier pro-epidemic conclusion. Neither paper establishes cholera as the cause of death of the people buried with sickles.

How should these graves be described?

“Drawsko sickle burials” describes what the excavation recorded. “Drawsko vampire burials” is a recognisable search term, but it carries an interpretation that the later authors expressly challenge.

Grave descriptions establish placement and context. Isotope measurements test an explanation about origins. Comparisons with folk belief help researchers propose meanings. None can substitute for the others.

The Drawsko source guide points to the figures, methods and disputed passages so those questions can be checked separately. More articles comparing historical claims with their evidence are available in the research archive.

The sickles survive. The people who chose them left no explanation in these studies. The strongest account respects both facts: the burial treatment was unusual, but a blade's position cannot tell us exactly whom it was supposed to protect.

Sources

• Gregoricka, Betsinger, Scott and Polcyn, Apotropaic Practices and the Undead: A Biogeochemical Assessment of Deviant Burials in Post-Medieval Poland, PLOS ONE 9(11), e113564, 2014. Original isotope research, with interpretive discussion.
• Polcyn and Gajda, Buried with sickles: early modern interments from Drawsko, Poland, Antiquity 89(348), pages 1373–1387, 2015. Original burial analysis, with comparative interpretation.