A study by archeologists has revealed certain people in medieval Yorkshire, England, were so afraid of the dead they chopped, smashed and burned their skeletons to make sure they stayed in their graves.
The research published by Historic England and the University of Southampton might represent the first scientific evidence in England of attempts to prevent the dead from walking and harming the living — still common in folklore in many parts of the world.
The archeologists who studied a collection of human bones — including the remains of adults, teenagers and children excavated more than half a century ago, and dated back to the period between the 11th and 14th century — rejected gruesome possibilities including cannibalism in times of famine or the massacre of outsiders.
The cut marks were in the wrong place for butchery and isotope analysis of the teeth showed that the people came from the same area as the villagers of Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire — a once flourishing village that had been completely deserted by the early 16th century.
The archeologists studied 137 pieces of broken human bones found in the pits of the village.
Their conclusion, published on Monday in the Journal of Archaeological Science, was that the most plausible explanation for the burn marks and cuts found on the skulls and upper body bones was deliberate mutilation after death.
The scientists believe the intention was to keep the dead from walking and spreading disease or attacking the living.
“The idea that the Wharram Percy bones are the remains of corpses burned and dismembered to stop them walking from their graves seems to fit the evidence best. If we are right, then this is the first good archeological evidence we have for this practice,” Historic England skeletal biologist Simon Mays said. “It shows us a dark side of medieval beliefs and provides a graphic reminder of how different the medieval view of the world was from our own.”
Medieval sources offer various remedies for dealing with the restless dead, believed to be individuals who were evil or cursed in life and still bore a grudge against the living in death. Solutions included digging up and decapitating or burning the skeletons.
The condition of the bones suggests that the bodies were decapitated soon after death, when they were still soft, and burned.
Only a ruined church, a few cottages and a series of humps and bumps in the fields remain of Wharram Percy, once a prosperous village with two manor houses and dozens of more humble houses.
It was extensively excavated in the 20th century and is one of the best documented of thousands of villages that were eventually abandoned due to plague, depopulation or changing agricultural practices.
The bones were from at least 10 individuals aged between two and 50, including seven adults, two of them women, and three very young children.
They were excavated in the 1960s when archeologists were investigating the foundations of a house, but had not been studied in detail until now. They were buried in three overlapping pits, between the houses, some distance from the church and graveyard.
The scientists rejected cannibalism — not uncommon in times of famine — as an explanation, because those cut marks would typically be at the joints, not clustered around the head.
The scientists also wondered if the people represented by their fragmented remains could have been outsiders, regarded with suspicion by the villagers.
However, analysis of the isotopes in some of the teeth — which can give a distinctive signature revealing where the individual lived in childhood when the teeth grew — showed that they were local.
“Strontium isotopes in teeth reflect the geology on which an individual was living as their teeth formed in childhood. A match between the isotopes in the teeth and the geology around Wharram Percy suggests they grew up in an area close to where they were buried, possibly in the village. This was surprising to us as we first wondered if the unusual treatment of the bodies might relate to their being from further afield rather than local,” University of Southampton professor of archeological sciences Alistair Pike said.
When the bones were found in the 1960s, archeologists thought they were probably older than the village and belonged to early Romano-British settlers whose remains were disturbed and reburied by the villagers.
The truth has proven to be more sinister.
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