Resumen de Assembling ancestors: the manipulation of Neolithic and Gallo-Roman skeletal remains at Pommerœul, Belgium

Barbara Veselka, David Reich, Giacomo Capuzzo, Iñigo Olalde, Kimberly Callan, Fatma Zalzala, Eveline Altena, Quentin Goffette, Harald Ringbauer, Henk van der Velde, Caroline Polet, Michel Toussaint, Christophe Snoeck, Laureline Cattelain

• Post-mortem manipulation of human bodies, including the commingling of multiple individuals, is attested throughout the past. More rarely, the bones of different individuals are assembled to create a single ‘individual’ for burial. Rarer still are composite individuals with skeletal elements separated by hundreds or even thousands of years. Here, the authors report an isolated inhumation within a Gallo-Roman-period cremation cemetery at Pommerœul, Belgium. Assumed to be Roman, radiocarbon determinations show the burial is Late Neolithic—with a Roman-period cranium. Bioarchaeological analyses also reveal the inclusion of multiple Neolithic individuals of various ages and dates. The burial is explained as a composite Neolithic burial that was reworked 2500 years later with the addition of a new cranium and grave goods.