[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

European cultures that believe in vampires invented all sorts of methods to prevent reanimation... save the obvious cremation. So it's not that unrealistic.

Originally Posted by RyanW

Expectation of bodily resurrection at the final judgment, the belief that the body was an integral part of the self rather than just a receptacle the soul inhabits in life, the general disfavor of cremation in several Middle Eastern cultures going back to Ancient Egypt and transmitted west via Judaism and to a lesser extent Zoroastrianism, and the connection of cremation with pagan rites.

There is also the small matter of the Romans, who were very much a cremating culture, and the Greeks who weren't adverse to it. Come to think of it, a lot of the Celts and Nordic cultures were also cremators - I suspect a lot of the pressure against cremation in medieval Europe was specifically to do with marginalising pagans rather than any specific theological objections in scripture.

Another interesting point to note for those of us that like RPG plot material is that the Romans - almost universally a cremating culture - followed on directly in many areas from Etruscans who where great buriers with extensive use of elaborate tombs and grave goods. For fantasy purposes, you might wonder what it was about the preceding culture that made the one that came after so eager to burn their dead to ashes...

Originally Posted by jason taylor

I remember one docu that had a camera crew in Eastern Europe find a body with a stake through it's heart because there were stories that it walked the night. The middle ages haven't ended in some places. In retrospect though I wonder if it wasn't a prank the villagers were playing on the gullible Hollywooders.

There are certainly weird burials that turn up from time to time - burying a corpse with a brick in its mouth was also quite common and archaeologists do find staked burials from time to time in all sorts of places.