Originally posted by Lessa
My question is, according to the scenario in the article, why are the slaves headless? In all cultures with such burial rituals, servants (dead or alive) and belongings are buried with the belief that they will serve to the deceased in the (whatever comes) next life. A headless servant surely won't be much of use!
On the other hand, even though I can't quote the source right now since it's been a long time, I've read that drastic measures such as decapitation was taken by Vikings when the proper burial rituals couldn't be carried. It was to prevent the deceased from returning back to life. |
We do not know why the slaves´ heads apparently either weren't put in the grave, or were removed at a later stage.
What we know though:
- Far from all graves with human sacrifice per decapitation have the same missing head issue.
- We have a hard time actually guessing/understanding what would have went on at a given funerary/sacrifice feast, but from the sources we have they generally seem to have been pretty elaborate.
- The rules of the living would probably have been conceived at differing a good bit from those of the dead - or the liminal.
They could have taken the heads afterwards or during, disposed of them/sacrificed them separately - in lake, another grave, a pyre - and still have considered these men able to serve in the afterlife (with their heads attached).
I´m not saying that´s how it actually happened in this instance, but it´s just important to stress that ideas about dead/dying/afterlife that we - or other cultures - might have do not necessarily apply to the people who decapitated these men, and buried them headless.
Fear of the dead slaves returning (because they had gone unwillingly?) is another thing which might play into it.