Image copyright Historic England Image caption Knife-marks on a rib fragment show attempts to "stop corpses rising from their graves" 
 
 Human bones excavated from a deserted medieval village in North Yorkshire show people mutilated and burnt bodies to stop them rising from the dead. 
 
 Knife marks were found on 137 bones dating between the 11th and 14th Centuries, discovered at Wharram Percy. 
 
 Experts said it was the first evidence of ancient practices to stop "corpses rising from their graves, spreading disease and assaulting the living". 
 
 The study was conducted by Historic England and Southampton University. 
 
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 'Dark side' 
 
 Researchers studied the remains of about 10 people and discovered the bodies had been decapitated and dismembered. 
 
 Knife marks were mostly in the head and neck area but there was also evidence for the burning of body parts and deliberate breaking of some bones after death, the team said. 
 
 Image copyright Historic England Image caption An illustration of how Wharram Percy would have looked in the late 12th Century 
 
 Image copyright Historic England Image caption Burn marks on an adult skull showed body parts were also burned 
 
 Simon Mays, human skeletal biologist at Historic England, said: "The idea that the Wharram Percy bones are the remains of corpses burnt 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 archaeological evidence we have for this practice. 
 
 "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." 
 
 The team ruled out a theory the remains were cannibalised by starving villagers because there was no evidence of knife marks clustering around major muscle attachments or large joints. 
 
 An analysis of teeth revealed the dead grew up near to where they were buried, dispelling a suggestion they were outsiders. 
 
 The findings have been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science Reports. 
 
 Image copyright Historic England Image caption Excavations at the abandoned medieval village of Wharram Percy started in the 20th Century 
 
 Wharram Percy, which lies between Malton and Driffield, in East Yorkshire, was excavated in the 20th Century. 
 
 It was once a thriving community built on sheep farming, but it fell into steep decline after the Black Death and was eventually completely abandoned. ||||| A study by archaeologists has revealed certain people in medieval Yorkshire 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 may 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. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the excavated human bones with arrows indicating the cut marks. Photograph: Historic England/PA 
 
 The archaeologists 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 which had been completely deserted by the early 16th century. 
 
 The archaeologists 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: Reports, is 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. 
 
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 Simon Mays, skeletal biologist at Historic England, said: “The idea that the Wharram Percy bones are the remains of corpses burnt 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 archaeological evidence we have for this practice.” 
 
 
 
 He added: “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 Wharram Percy bones suggests that the bodies were decapitated quite soon after death, when the bones were still soft, and burned. 
 
 
 
 Only the 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 which were eventually abandoned due to plague, depopulation, or changing agricultural practice. 
 
 
 
 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 archaeologists 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. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest An illustration of the medieval village of Wharram Percy in north Yorkshire, where human bones were excavated. Photograph: Historic England/PA 
 
 The scientists rejected cannibalism – not uncommon in times of famine, and revealed at several English sites including the Ice Age human remains at Cheddar Gorge – 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 very local. 
 
 Alistair Pike, professor of archaeological sciences at Southampton, said: “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.” 
 
 When the bones were found in the 1960s the archaeologists 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 proved to be more sinister. 
 
 • This article was amended on 3 April 2017. An earlier version said the study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
– We humans can be a superstitious lot, and scientists are revealing yet another example of the extremes we'll go to in the fight to keep evil and danger at bay. In this case, experts report in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports that human bones excavated in 1963 and 1964 from the much-studied medieval English village Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire had been chopped, broken, and burned post-mortem. In their study, the researchers note that textual accounts of revenants—that is, "a re-animated corpse that arises from its grave"—in England date back to the 11th century, and they conclude the mutilation was likely done in an attempt to "lay revenant corpses." It would be the first such evidence of the practice in England. Researchers reached this conclusion after studying 137 bones from 10 people (between the ages of 2 and 50) who'd been dismembered and decapitated between the 11th and 14th centuries. They say the revenant-corpse evidence is stronger than that of a competing theory: survival cannibalism. The BBC reports the cut marks were in the wrong places for butchery (not near large joints, for instance) and differed from those made on animals consumed at Wharram Percy. Scientists also seemingly disproved another theory, that the remains were those of foreigners whom the villagers feared. The Guardian reports an isotopic analysis of their teeth indicated they were of the area. "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," says lead researcher Simon Mays. (See why this woman's heart was cut out of her dead body.)