{"id":6110,"date":"2013-11-17T17:10:57","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T00:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6110"},"modified":"2013-11-17T17:12:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T00:12:19","slug":"excavating-witches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6110","title":{"rendered":"Excavating Witches"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was the obligatory Halloween content over at Bones Don’t Lie<\/em>, but I had too much else on my plate to link to it then.<\/p>\n

The question is, how can you tell if a buried ancient skeleton was that of a witch (in the anthropological sense)? Does the mouth full of iron nails mean something?<\/a><\/p>\n

And by the way, what happened to the bodies of the “witches” of Salem?<\/a><\/p>\n

Those latter unfortunate victims gave birth to such a present-day tourism boom that I am waiting for the local promoters to stage a “discovery,” as was done for King Henry II with “Arthur” and “Guinevere” at Glastonbury Abbey. <\/a>(Assuming that you accept the explanation that the 12th-century “discovery” was a money-raising ploy to help rebuild the burnt abbey.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the obligatory Halloween content over at Bones Don’t Lie, but I had too much else on my plate to link to it then. The question is, how can you tell if a buried ancient skeleton was that of a witch (in the anthropological sense)? Does the mouth full of iron nails mean something? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,21,29],"class_list":["post-6110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-england","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Ay","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11709,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11709","url_meta":{"origin":6110,"position":0},"title":"Witchcraft: You’re Not Making It Strange Enough","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The final article in the \"Paganism, art, and fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies argues that books and television series based on historical witchcraft make it too safe and fail to portray \"the genuine strangeness of witches and magic users in all periods and cultures.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/discovery2-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11135,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11135","url_meta":{"origin":6110,"position":1},"title":"“Witchy” Cave Is New Obstacle to Mine Expansion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"When I went to graduate school, I wanted to write a paper on how so many interesting natural sites have \"Devil\" or \"Devil's\" in their name. Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming might be the best-known in the United States.((The federal government has been confused by the possessive apostrophe since\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/coloradosun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2019\/11\/IMG_6038.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4944,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4944","url_meta":{"origin":6110,"position":2},"title":"Sex with Ghosts, Vengeful Mummies, etc.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Hairpin, A Q&A with author, photographer, and ossuary expert Paul Koudounaris. Two quotes: Back in grad school I was known as the Fox Mulder of the art history department. Everyone else was working on Rembrandt and I was looking at woodblock prints of witches. . . . If\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Egypt\"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=egypt"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4555,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4555","url_meta":{"origin":6110,"position":3},"title":"The Bushranger and the Witches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A quirky story has been filtering out of Australia in bits and pieces. First came the discovery of the headless skeleton of Ned Kelly (1854\u20131880), the country's most infamous bushranger (outlaw) of the 19th century, which involved DNA matching and other modern techniques. Then his descendents appealed for whoever had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4639,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4639","url_meta":{"origin":6110,"position":4},"title":"Tempest in a Pointy Hat","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Organizers of this year's Pagan Pride Day in Denver, Colorado, want to set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of people dressed as pointy-hat witches.\u00a0 One of the organizers posted to a statewide mailing list, I think that we should let witches in non-black hats participate, too...I was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1482,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1482","url_meta":{"origin":6110,"position":5},"title":"Ten Worst Movies about Witches and Pagans","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogger Gus diZerega polled his readers on \"The Ten Worst Movies Depicting Witches and Other Pagans.\" Readers differed on The Craft: \"As a movie, I don't think it was too bad. But their portrayal of witches as goth teenage girls with (somewhat severe) psychological problems just rubs me the wrong\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"movies\"","block_context":{"text":"movies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=movies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6110"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6114,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6110\/revisions\/6114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}