Maybe her husband was just having the last laugh. NO more nagging?!

[Fig. 1]  The female 'vampire' with brick shoved in her mouth.

To all the blood sucker groupies,

                I dedicate this blog post to you! My group and I are focusing on  'Vampire' Burials.

[Fig. 2] "On second thought, I will have the garlic bread."

Super cool, however, case studies and peer-reviewed articles are sparse and few between. My searches on Google are returning  to all the same sites!  Erin mentioned in class that Google now personalizes searches?! Uncool...I'm finding all the same stuff! I was originally going to do my blog prompt on the Vampires of Lesbos, which I posted earlier but there was only 2 websites that have the bare minimum of information. So, I decided to look at the vampire burial from the Venice plague grave discovered in 2006. A fellow blogger (Mytch Gales) has posted a fantastic blog on the Venice 'vampire' if anyone is interested in more information: Mytch's 'Vampire' of Venice Blog

[Fig.3 ] Another angle of the female 'vampire' with the brick in her mouth.

          I found it really hard to find a website that had enough information to analyze and more to the point, one that was not full of fluff. Vampirism as many would attest to is a cult obsession and has fascinated many for decades. That being said, there are many websites that spew information about vampires but have information that has little to do with archaeology and vampires. After searching through things like the Vampire Diaries, and Twilight, I found a website Archaeology with a page on the Venice 'vampire'. Finally, a site where I can use my handy group rubric! My group and I created our own marking rubric which I am going to use to assess the article of the Venice 'vampire'. Our marking scheme is set up out of 5, with 5 being excellent and 1 being poor. However, two of the sections analysis and background information are out of 10.

Analysis (7/10): This website is an actual interview with Matteo Borrini, the archaeologist who discovered the female 'vampire' with the brick in her mouth. 

[Fig.3] Matteo Borrini, the archaeologist who discovered the female 'vampire'.

In terms of content, this website is quite good. However, because this case was newly discovered when this website published this article, there had been little time to write extensively on this discovery. Keeping this in mind the material in this website is quite in-depth for the time it was published. This article highlights questions such as: where was the burial? Why was the brick placed in the mouth of the corpse? Were there other remains with similar mortuary treatment? And did it connect to any myths/ legends of vampires? These questions provide context to the burial and why the female in the mass grave could be considered a 'vampire'.

Background Information (7/10): In terms of background history, I would give this website 7 out of 10. It did go into detail about what a vampire burial is, why this one could be a suspected 'vampire' burial but there was a  lack of peer-reviewed sources. It did have vital information about this discovered 'vampire' burial, but it could have gone into more detail. Moreover, I feel like good background information would draw on other sources that might be relevant to their information. For example, they could have talked about other suspected 'vampire' burials and similarities/differences, linked other archaeologists that have discovered 'vampire' burials, etc. 

Resources (3/5):  This website was weak sauce when it came to peer-reviewed articles or lack thereof.   It drew on no outside sources. I chose to be a bit more lenient with my mark ( I was going to give the site a 1), primarily because the website article is a first-hand account of the Venice 'vampire' by the archaeologist who discovered her in the mass grave. What can be better than reading information about this suspected 'vampire' burial from the person who discovered it?  I also thought that this website didn't do a very good job of helping readers pursue this case study further. For example, I would have made sure that this website had links to other resources that could have helped the viewer find more on the topic of vampire burials. 

Website Layout & Presentation (3.5/5): This website was really well-laid out. The layout was consistently formatted and the flow of information was concise and relevant. This site was also very easy to navigate and it was quite user-friendly (My mom could use it, and she isn't the best with computers!). That being said, the website wasn't as visually appealing as it could have been. It was just a white background with black font, I personally am a visual person and I would have like a bit more pizzazz (yes this is actually a word). This site would have received a higher mark if they had put links to other relevant sites that could help strengthen the information on their website. It also would have made it more user-friendly for the people who wanted to learn more about the 'vampire' of Venice if there had been links to more information. When I searched the Archaeology website for more on vampire burials there was only one other article (Vampires of Lesbos).

[Fig. 5] This was the mass grave where the 'vampire' female was discovered.

[Fig. 6] The 'vampire' female at the bottom left of the photo.

Overall, this website would get 20.5/30. It was an interesting little teaser, but I felt that I wanted to know more about the female 'vampire'.  I also most definitely wanted to see more pictures of the mass grave (Fig. 5 was not part of the website, I just thought it would help people see where the female 'vampire' was located). I think that our website will be a lot more aesthetically pleasing and hopefully easier to navigate with more options for external links to other information. I did think that the website flowed well, and it was detailed in what was discovered, but due to the lack of peer-reviewed sources this is where this website lost majority of its marks. I do think that our rubric was really specific to our website so that was sometimes hard to equivocate with this website.

For additional information on the Venice 'vampire':

Nuzzolese, E. and Borrini, M. ( 2012). Forensic Approach to an Archaeological Casework of "Vampires" Skeletal Remains in Venice: Odontological and Anthropological Prospectus. Journal of Forensic Sciences, [e-journal] 55(6), Available through: Wiley Online Library

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070829-venice-plague.html