It — for it was not a him yet, not then, not truly, no matter how much it wanted them to remember it that way — appeared on the outskirts of the village on a hot and shadeless afternoon. The children had thrown rocks at it. It did not move. They could not see a face under its ragged hood, but what looked to be an approximation of a mouth twisted into something not unlike a smile.
Last month, archaeologists announced a stunning find: a completely sealed tomb cut into the rock in Tuscany, Italy.
It – not he, never he — stayed at the outskirts for at least a month, never venturing to cross the border into the village proper. It was always polite, if nothing else. It solidified and took shape and waited.
No one ever saw where it went at night. It was there in the morning, that was all. It only moved under the light of the sun.
The untouched tomb held what looked like the body of an Etruscan prince holding a spear, along with the ashes of his wife. Several news outlets reported on the discovery of the 2,600-year-old warrior prince.
A bone analysis has revealed the warrior prince was actually a princess, as Judith Weingarten, an alumna of the British School at Athens noted on her blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East.
She had smiled at the council then, and everyone felt a bit foolish, after that, for having worried in the first place. If she was not afraid, what reason did they have to fear it? She laughed a little, and fear itself seemed ridiculous against the sound of it. “He will stay with me, then, if it concerns you,” she said. “I have need of a manservant. This one is clever and stays low to the ground; perhaps he will survive the next hunt. God knows I could use a spear-bearer who lives through at least one without failing me.” They all laughed then, and its smile was no longer an approximation. It was curled up at her feet like a cat, like smoke.
When the team removed the sealed slab blocking the tomb, they saw two large platforms. On one platform lay a skeleton bearing a lance. On another lay a partially incinerated skeleton. The team also found several pieces of jewelry and a bronze-plated box, which may have belonged to a woman, according to the researchers.
“On the inner wall, still hanging from a nail, was an aryballos [a type of flask] oil-painted in the Greek-Corinthian style,” Mandolesi said.
Initially, the lance suggested the skeleton on the biggest platform was a male warrior, possibly an Etruscan prince. The jewelry likely belonged to the second body, the warrior prince’s wife.
An old woman in a grey cloak has hovered near the edge of the dig for a month and a week. “Not a wife,” she whispers under the sound of chisel and hammer. “Not a wife, not a wife, not a wife. Not a marriage tomb. Not a wife. She never took a wife.”
But bone analysis revealed the prince holding the lance was actually a 35- to 40-year-old woman, whereas the second skeleton belonged to a man.
Given that, what do archaeologists make of the spear?
Everything under the noonday sun was ashes. The Eldest pointed a shaky finger at the unmoving heap of rags at her feet. “Bury it with her,” she said. “She took it under her protection while she lived. She must defend against it under the dirt.” One of the mothers of the village sobbed softly. Nobody moved.
“The tomb is sealed,” another one of the elders pointed out. “The tomb is sealed, and everything else has been burned. Surely that is enough. We cannot bury it with her — we cannot do that to her. We cannot put it in the ground with her, in that small room, to be alone with it forever.” The sobbing continued, still softly.
The Eldest shook her head. “It goes in the ground.” She gestured for one of the Fetchers to gather the bundle — still it did not move, but it was not inert, it was simply waiting, and there is a great deal of difference between those two types of motionlessness — and the Fetcher did so.
The sobbing erupted into a wail. “Not with her. Please, not with her, not alone, not alone.”
The Eldest thought for a moment. “With her spear, then. We will give her her spear, and perhaps the Ashed One will not trouble her.” Another Fetcher gathered up the spear — still wet, still red — and stood still as a stone next to the bundle.
“Bury it, and quickly,” The Eldest said. “I want that tomb closed again before my shadow grows longer. Put the spear in her hand, and do not touch the ashes if you can help it.”
Why was the flesh burned but not the rags that covered it, she wondered helplessly, madly to herself. Why would the rags not burn.
“The spear, most likely, was placed as a symbol of union between the two deceased,” Mandolesi told Viterbo News 24 on Sept. 26.
Weingarten doesn’t believe the symbol of unity explanation.
They covered the grave with stones and witching marks and left the village in silence.
Tags: creepy archaeology fan fiction, etruscans, gender reveal parties, grave goods, skeletons, the old woman in the grey cloak
God, what I wouldn’t give for an ethereal ashen thrall. Do you have any idea how much gold they can carry?
Also, is the haft on that spear made from rowan wood? because if it is, yeah, there is definitely an ancient evil buried in that tomb, and we’re going to have to start summoning spirit warriors and scattering salt and water over thresholds and all that shit.
According to the article, it’s not rowan, it’s iron. Of course, that’s not particularly comforting, either…
A spear of cold iron? We’re TOAST. Someone set up a Portal to the Dark Realms, we need to talk to an Etruscan warrior princess post-haste.
We’re TOAST
Oh, YOU.
Note that cold iron is effective against they fey folk and some demons, but devils will fall to nothing less than wrought silver
Grey-cloaked ladies: bounding mortar and pestle first-class to a tight sealed grave near YOU.
Fine fine fine culturally-sensitive:
Grey-cloaked ladies sharing but one eye and tooth between them: soon to appear in the sight of an MRA near you.
In ten thousand years The Toast will be all that remains of our civilization, and archaeologists will uncover its remains, and know that of the thousands upon millions of empires, human and alien, that rise and fall between now and the end of time, none will come close to approximating the brilliance of ours.
And the old woman in the grey cloak will be there, waiting in the shadows.
The tags! creepy archaeology fan fiction, etruscans, gender reveal parties
May we have occasion to use them ALL again.
I want so much more creepy archaeology fan fiction!
Best use of “gender reveal parties” EVER
I want to read the whole story, everything in between those lines, and learn all about this.
Also the title (which I know comes from the article) reminds me of that line from “Borning Cry” which is the worst Lutheran song ever but at least now I will have something else to think about whenever I am subjected to it.
Every time you write something gloriously creepy I think – this is it. This is the best one. She can’t top this one.
And every time you prove me wrong.
WHERE IS THE NOVEL, MALLORY
OR THE BOOK OF SHORT STORIES
PLEASE TELL ME THEY ARE IN PROGRESS
I WILL BUY THEM WHETHER PUBLISHED THROUGH PUBLISHING HOUSE OR BY YOUR OWN FAIR HANDS
ugh idk what to write about tho
Neither do I. But if you could do a novel I would read it.
You’re good at creepy and unsettling, so maybe a feminist horror story? There is not NEARLY enough feminism in modern horror. Ghost stories? IDK either.
(I am currently editing a Female Privateer Wrongly Accused of Treachery Kills People story and writing a Post-Apocalylptic Adventure With Lesbians so you can’t have those.)
I loved this piece, but I’m mostly going to ignore it to express my continued annoyance at the weird sexist assumptions of archeologists. This is the second time THIS MONTH I’ve seen a story about them assuming that anyone who did anything important in an ancient society was obviously male, then oops, it turns out it was actually done by a woman.
Agreed. And you gotta love the dude doubling down on it too – “Oh, it’s totes a symbol of union! That is clearly the explanation for this otherwise incomprehensible situation where a WOMAN was buried as if she were a warrior!” Funny how the “spear as symbol of unity” explanation didn’t occur to you until after you found out it was a woman. I guess the sanctity of the union between a man and his spear is a given…
Especially given that in the first article, when they thought it was a “warrior prince” they mention that she was actually buried with multiple weapons, including a sword between her legs which is a pretty awesome “you’ve got a dick? That’s nice, look what I have” move.
The other story, if anyone is interested, is that recent evidence suggests that 75% of cave paintings of hands were done by women. Before, they’d assumed that the reason so many were small is that they were an initiation ceremony done by teenage boys, because of course small hands couldn’t mean women doing something interesting.
That is so awesome! I didn’t know that–thank you for sharing.
And like 10 years ago (or longer) footprint analysis indicated that cave paintings were made not just by women but by pregnant women.
HOW long ago were papers published showing that “venus” sculptures were actually done by women, as self portraits?
SEVERAL TIMES NOW, over the past decade or longer, remains buried with assumed-male grave goods (weapons, usually) were found to be female on closer inspection.
And yet there’s still this prevailing attitude that men do and create everything and have since humans first walked upright. It really bothers me!
Statistically, though, most ancient people buried with weapons are male. So then the archaeologists do a bone analysis, as they did here, and they test their interpretation. In this case it was not correct. But the assumption that a burial with a weapon indicates as warrior is just as simplistic as the assumption that a person buried with a weapon is a male. Just because she had a spear beside her in her grave doesn’t mean she was Xena. Are little boys buried with spears necessarily child-soldiers?
There are lots of old-fashioned biases in every discipline to be overcome, of course, but also, ancient cultures tended to have really strict gender binaries and rules attached to them. I don’t see that anything was really done wrong here. A hypothesis was made on the basis of accumulated evidence/knowledge, then it was tested using a scientific analysis. I agree that the “symbol of union” explanation isn’t any more likely than the warrior princess one, though. Unless there’s some kind of Etruscan spear=union custom that I am not aware of.
Anyway, the conclusion to draw from this example is not “all/most archaeologists are sexists.” Maybe that most ancient people were sexists, though, and so that factors into our interpretations.
I’m a burgeoning archaeologist, and I swear we’re not all crazy and sexist (but of course most of us are), and there are so many issues with sexing skeletons (that’s what people call it, which is another issue entirely, for a variety of reasons), and I have so many FEELINGS about it!
Um, please pitch Mallory and Nicole an essay about sexing skeletons and revisionist sexism in archaeology and your feelings, I WANT TO READ THAT.
Oh, how scary but exciting….! I will think about that — I know Things — I’m a doctoral student in archaeology — but I’m not a bioarchaeologist — that is, a human-bone-archaeologist — (though I’ve done a bit with bones / writing on bones / things on gender, hence the Feelings) — and I feel like I would write something, and bioarchaeologists around the world would castigate / ostracize me. But MAYBE?
Um, please pitch Mallory and Nicole an essay about sexing skeletons and revisionist sexism in archaeology and your feelings, I WANT TO READ THAT.
That is so awesome! I didn't know that–thank you for sharing.
Yeah, it's pretty uncommon to find a burial of a woman with weapons in any period. That's why it's newsworthy.
There are some awesome blogs about this subject (and related), including Judith Weingarten's Zenobia blog mentioned in the article. I also highly recommend Powered by Osteons, written by Kristina Killgrove, a bioarchaeologist.
This article is like if Neil Gaiman wrote for Archaeology Magazine and I LOVE IT
Also it is SO RARE to discover an untouched intact high status Etruscan burial I'm so excited!
I really hugely love your horror writing.
I would like to know about books Malory has written, please. Because she must have written some.
Texts from Jane Eyre.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND.