Medieval Britons were known to have smashed up their dead neighbours to ensure they didn't rise from the dead, but this is far from the only violence historically carried out on the dead to avoid zombies, vampires and criminals escaping eternal rest. Read more: Decomposition, decay and the 'future of death': what really happens when we die
Analysis of Medieval bones excavated from Wharram Percy, by researchers from Historic England and the University of Southampton, revealed that many bodies featured knife marks, were decapitated and dismembered, and some were found to have been burned after death.
According to the paper, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, this practice matches with known beliefs at the time that corpses would escape their graves and roam the countryside, spreading disease and wreaking havoc. Writers at the time suggested a wide manner of preventative measures, including decapitating and dismembering corpses, or burning them — fitting with the discoveries at Wharram Percy.
There were rival theories, though. The first was that the bodies were ill-treated because they were the corpses of outsiders. Further analysis ruled this out when isotopes in their teeth showed they were indeed locals. The second theory claimed Medieval Brits were stricken with famine and so cannibalised the corpses, but the knife marks weren't centred on the joints or muscle attachments, only around the head and neck.
"We know from Medieval documents that people believed in these revenant corpses and we have documents which said the ways in which these walking dead could be combated," Simon Mays, a skeletal biologist at Historic England told WIRED. "The archaeological evidence is different because it tells us what people were actually doing, as opposed to what Medieval document writers were saying or thought people ought to do." Fake news isn't a new problem, then.
While the Wharram Percy bones offer some of the clearest evidence of Brits trying to avoid the reanimation of the recently deceased, there is evidence of other death practices that are odd by modern standards.
"This goes back to the earliest humans in Europe," said co-author Alistair Pike, professor of archaeological sciences at the University of Southampton. "The idea of digging a hole and putting a body in it; we take it for granted that that's how you process the dead. In fact, different cultures over time have had completely different ways of dealing with their dead."
Going back 40,000 years, for example, the first human remains in Europe suggest cannibalism because of cut marks on the bone, though Pike admitted that some would say it's hard to prove intent. "Something like 30 per cent of all human remains across Europe during this period have cut marks on them."
Such activity has been present across every historical period of Britain, he continued. "We have prehistoric remains in this country that show mutilation. We have dismembered remains from various Iron Age settlement sites, sites that are 2,500 years old, where we have people in disused storage pits. We don't know what the belief system is that informed that, though, because we don't have the documents we do from the Medieval period."
One such site is at Danebury hillfort, in Hampshire, where storage pits are filled with "special deposits" – the jargon archaeologists use to refer to "bits of human", Mays noted.
As seen in the site at Wharram Percy, it appears this continued into the Medieval period. "We've got documents from different areas of Britain, showing the walking dead were present in Medieval beliefs in different areas of britain, and different countries in Northwest Europe," Mays said.
It's not only Brits, of course — these practices were rampant across Europe, though the theme wasn't always zombies. People were also scared of vampires, so bodies were "treated slightly strangely" to prevent bloodsuckers from rising, too. There's a cemetery in Poland were large sickles are placed over the abdomen or the neck to prevent grave escapes.
"The idea was that they'd try to rise and kill themselves on these big sickles that are buried over them," he said. "That's consistent with folklore in that part of the world concerning how you prevent vampires from rising from the grave." (There's disagreement here, with suggestions the sickles prevent the dead from being attacked by demons, not from turning into them.)
Beyond Europe, folklore around zombies has been found in Haiti, likely originating in West Africa. "It's slightly different because zombies are induced to rise from the grave from magic or other means," he explained. "In Europe, corpses rose of their own volition, so it's a different kind of belief."
Such practices also lasted longer than you may believe. Documents – and now the Wharram Percy evidence — shows that such practices continued long past the Medieval era. "In later periods, you find not the same techniques but you do find, in the Christian context, things like criminals buried face downward so on judgement day they'd be facing the wrong way and speed their journey to hell," Pike said.
Changes in how we deal with our dead have come recently, too. "Up until the 1880s, cremation was something that wouldn't be countenanced in this country, it was thought it prevented the resurrection of the body after death, and it took the church a long time to come to terms with cremation," Mays said. "Now you have ashes blasted off into space and all kinds of things."
And Mays predicts that change will continue. "We're going to get a whole variety of different ways being acceptable, as a means of disposal of the dead, and we're going to see a bigger variety of practices."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
