MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

For many centuries, archaeologists have unearthed graves with various material evidence perceived as being designed to keep the corpse or corpses within the burial site. These artifacts range from massive rocks during the Bronze Age to smaller grinding stones of the Medieval Era to bricks forced into mouths during the 16th century. This paper will follow the history of this type of archaeological evidence throughout the world and offer insights into future excavations that may be explored. The fear of reanimated corpses has been the relational narrative into the motivations behind past humans’ actions at these gravesites. While most modern cultures no longer fear the dead in these ways, reanimated corpse imagery has progressed so much that this concept persists in representing humans’ ideals and desires as we interact with material culture, but in a multitude of vastly different ways. Modern society has created zombies in tabletop games such as Warhammer 40K and video game series such as Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption: Zombie Nightmare. This paper will look at what kind of zombie related archaeological record we are currently creating in the digital era.