Skeletons are assembled from multiple individuals, thousands of

A skeleton discovered in a Gallo-Roman cemetery in Pomerol, Belgium, was shown to be composed of late Neolithic bones and Roman-era skulls from multiple individuals. Researchers found that the composite skeleton was assembled in a Neolithic burial and modified 2,500 years later with new skulls and new grave goods.

While the rearrangement of skeletal remains after burial is well documented in the European archaeological record as early as the Paleolithic, common practices included secondary burials, moving bones, and removing bones for ritual purposes. Skeletons assembled from the bones of different individuals to look like one are even rarer, with only two known examples from Bronze Age sites in Scotland.

Pomerol’s grave was first excavated in the 1970s and is the only inhumation burial in the cemetery, which has a total of 76 cremation burials. Cremation tombs date back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, but the burials were deeper and they were lying on the right side with legs bent instead of the typical Roman period lying on the back with lower limbs extended. However, a Roman bone nail was found near the skull, leading archaeologists to conclude that the man was buried during the Gallo-Roman period, but in an atypical arrangement.

Remains from the cemetery were recently re-examined, and while bone fragments from the cremation burials dated to the Roman period as expected, radiocarbon analysis of the buried bones returned a late Neolithic date range, although between them There are significant differences. The earliest side of the mountain is dated to 2675 BC and the oldest side is from 3333 BC, so the composite is made from bones from three different periods, covering more than 600 years.

Osteological evaluation found that the metatarsals and phalanges (foot and toe bones) belonged to seven individuals, five of which were adults and two of which were non-adult. DNA extracted from the long bones and skulls showed they came from at least five individuals. It was not possible to determine whether there was overlap between the five and seven contributors. To make it even more confusing, three badger bones from three different badgers were mixed in. Badger bones are even older than humans, ranging from 5971 BC to 5746 BC and 3625 BC to 3375 BC

The skull could not be radiocarbon dated, but bone nails found next to it dated to AD 69-210, and DNA kinship analysis found that the skull belonged to an owner buried less than 100 miles away between AD 211 and 335. The two children are related, so it’s definitely Roman. It is also female.

Researchers have proposed two possible hypotheses to explain the unusual burial.

One possibility is that the composite burial was disturbed during the cremation process during the Gallo-Roman period. Either there was no skull originally and the Roman community who discovered the tomb added one to complete the “individual”, or they replaced the existing Neolithic skull with a Roman-period skull. In either case, the pin appears to have been added at this time, perhaps as a grave item. There are records of disturbances to earlier tombs during the Roman period, but there is no evidence of graves being re-excavated elsewhere. A second possibility is that the entire “individual” was assembled during the Gallo-Roman period, combining locally sourced Neolithic bones with a Roman skull. If so, as far as we know, this would be the first Roman tomb in which a new “individual” was assembled from prehistoric and Roman bones.

Considering that the curved legs of the tomb on the right were unknown in the area during the Gallo-Roman period but are well attested in the Neolithic, the first possibility seems the most likely.

The research has been published in the journal ancient times It can be read here.