%0 Journal Article %A Veselka, Barbara %A Reich, David %A Capuzzo, Giacomo %A Olalde, Iñigo %A Callan, Kimberly %A Zalzala, Fatma %A Altena, Eveline %A Goffette, Quentin %A Ringbauer, Harald %A van der Velde, Henk %A Polet, Caroline %A Toussaint, Michel %A Snoeck, Christophe %A Cattelain, Laureline %+ Haplo Group, Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Society %T Assembling ancestors: the manipulation of Neolithic and Gallo-Roman skeletal remains at Pommerœul, Belgium : %G eng %U https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0010-0D4A-E %R 10.15184/aqy.2024.158 %7 2024-10-23 %D 2024 %8 23.10.2024 %* Review method: peer-reviewed %X 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. %K North-west Europe, Neolithic, Roman, ancient DNA, burial practices, composite inhumation %J Antiquity %V 98 %N 402 %] 158 %I Antiquity Publications, Ltd. %C Gloucester, Eng. %@ 0003-598X