In Poland, the archaeological mission of the Podlaski Museum, within the framework of a cemetery inventory project, discovered more than 50 graveyards, where the burials were actually carried out illegally.
The discovery is reported by Science in Poland. Previously, scientists knew only seven cemeteries located in the vicinity of the city of Bialystok. Now their number has exceeded 50. They differ in that the burial places on them are marked with steles or ordinary boulders.
Scientists assumed that the graveyards were organized by the Jotvin community, closely associated with the Prussians and Lithuanians and conquered by the Teutonic Order. Another hypothesis says that those who died from the plague were buried there, which more than once struck the Podlaskie Voivodeship.
Archaeologist Hubert Lepionka found that both hypotheses were untenable. The shape of the headstones is always unique, but most of them do not have any symbols. Only on some stones were carved crosses, dates and hearts found.
The age of the cemeteries does not exceed several hundred years. They were mainly used from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Probably, peasants were buried there. But who were they, what was their religion? Archaeologists cannot yet answer these questions.
Perhaps semi-legal cemeteries came about because of poverty. Not every family could afford a funeral, because they had to pay tax and pay for the services of mourners. To save money, the dead were buried secretly and anonymously.
"Although synods forbade priests to charge funeral fees, in practice, mourners had to pay," says Hubert Lepionka. "These costs could ruin the whole family."
Legends can also help to solve the riddle of unusual cemeteries. For example, back in 1976, ethnologists recorded the story of a villager that he heard from his grandfather. In the village, a woman committed suicide. Therefore, she was buried not in the village cemetery, but in the old cemetery with steles.
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According to legend, the deceased returned to the village every night, opened the pigsties and released the animals from there. The villagers dug up the body and pierced the throat of the deceased with a wooden stake, after which she stopped “returning” to the village.
