PONE-D-20-13088

Between belief and fear - Reinterpreting prone burials during the Middle Ages and early modern period in German-speaking Europe

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lösch,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

All comments must be addressed and language editing needs to be done by a native speaker before re-submission.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 31 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Peter F. Biehl, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. In your manuscript, please provide additional information regarding the specimens used in your study. Ensure that you have reported specimen numbers and complete repository information, including museum name and geographic location.

If permits were required, please ensure that you have provided details for all permits that were obtained, including the full name of the issuing authority, and add the following statement:

'All necessary permits were obtained for the described study, which complied with all relevant regulations.'

If no permits were required, please include the following statement:

'No permits were required for the described study, which complied with all relevant regulations.'

For more information on PLOS ONE's requirements for paleontology and archaeology research, see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-paleontology-and-archaeology-research.

3. Please include your tables as part of your main manuscript and remove the individual files. Please note that supplementary tables should remain as separate "supporting information" files.

4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

5. We note that Figure 1 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright.

We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:

1. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 1 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. 

We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text:

“I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.”

Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission.

In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].”

1. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only.

The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful:

USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/

Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html

NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/

USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/#

Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Your manuscript has now been seen by two referees, whose comments are appended below. You will see from these comments that while the referees find your work of great interest, they have raised some concerns that must be addressed before re-submission. Most importantly, the manuscript has to be language edited by a native speaker.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I am convinced by the data set as well by their interpretation. Especially the belanced argument for different contexts seems to be plausible and shows indirectly, that archaeology produces sometimes containers which incorporate very different features. It becomes apparent that there is no single explanation any more. Furthermore, prone burials can be seen as "part of the norm" - they do not necessarily represent deviant burials in general.

Just some remarks:

Fig. 2 does not necessarily show young adults as the main group, as the older adults and the especially the individuals just classified as "adult" may indicate the presence of all age groups.

Looking for the burial places, it is apparent that more than two thirds have been buried within the churchyard, which means no exclusion!

The climax of prone burials during the period of the 11th to 13th century (p. 12) may be due to research activities. Cemeteries of this "pre-Christian" time has been excavated much often than later burial places. And this is also the case in comparison with the West - which may lead to an over-estimation for the East.

"Wiederkehrer" and "Nachzehrer" are terms of the modern "Volkskunde" I suppose, and the data go back to the Handatlas der deutschen Volkskunde. Therefore we should be careful with their interpretation, especially the Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens is problematic, as it has been only reprinted in 1987 as cited here, but originally printed in the 1920s. Nevertheless, the argument of an increase of dangerous dead seems to be plausible.

All references are listed in order of their occurence - could they be ordered alphabetically?

Reviewer #2: This is an important survey and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this paper and reflecting on its results. As the authors clearly state, whilst the topic has been intensively studied in Britain and increasingly in Poland and parts of Scandinavia, a survey of Central Europe (even if focusing largely on German-speaking areas) is very much needed. The aim of the study is clearly stated - to situate prone burials within broader medieval and post-medieval funerary rite trends, and to close the research gap with a substantial dataset. This has, in general, been achieved.

The authors tackle the use of the term deviant very effectively with Sonderbestattung, which is wholly appropriate and mirrors the use of special or structured deposits described by zooarchaeologists working with atypical placements of animal remains. Subsequently deviant is used throughout the paper with this caveat.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that most research on deviant burials in Britain has focused on the early medieval period (and particularly in England), whilst late medieval 'deviancy' has been studied comparatively less and has suffered from the same problem as Central European site-based examples, although Gilchrist and Sloane's comprehensive survey of monastic cemeteries is the best study to date of the diversity of late medieval funerary rites. This has not been cited and it would be worth including (Requiem: The Medieval Monastic Cemetery).

Throughout the paper the use of chronological segments is effective in relation to highlighting the major trends observed, however I would urge the authors to clarify some of their terms in the earlier sections. Chronological designations such as "advanced early middle ages" are not very helpful, and it would be better to consistently use the same chronological time slices or specify centuries in each case.

I think the parameters that were recorded and statistically compared are useful, and I found the discussion to be articulated in a very accessible way, providing a convincing contextualisation of the statistical trends outlined in the results. There is a good balance between the general categories used for comparison and the level of detail that is included within the discussion, especially for specific temporal and spatial trends. I think the interpretation of a shift from expressions of humility to ritual action taken against harmful revenants is plausible, and the connection with the late dissemination of Slavic "vampire" beliefs (in turn from a likely Balkan origin), as well as the agency of pandemics, is presented in a critical and compelling way.

The figures, in general, are fine, and the tables look ok in their original Excel format. I would suggest for Fig 1, adding an inset map showing the case study regions within Europe as a whole.

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Between belief and fear - Reinterpreting prone burials during the Middle Ages and early modern period in German-speaking Europe

PONE-D-20-13088R1

Dear Dr. Lösch,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Peter F. Biehl, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: