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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2024

Barbara Veselka*
Affiliation:
Archaeology, Environmental Changes & Geochemistry Research Group, Department of Art Sciences and Archaeology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
David Reich
Affiliation:
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, USA Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, USA Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Giacomo Capuzzo
Affiliation:
Archaeology, Environmental Changes & Geochemistry Research Group, Department of Art Sciences and Archaeology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Department of Humanities, University of Trento, Italy
Iñigo Olalde
Affiliation:
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA BIOMICs Research Group, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
Kimberly Callan
Affiliation:
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, USA
Fatma Zalzala
Affiliation:
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, USA
Eveline Altena
Affiliation:
Department of Human Genetics, Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands
Quentin Goffette
Affiliation:
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
Harald Ringbauer
Affiliation:
Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Henk van der Velde
Affiliation:
ADC Archeoprojecten, Amersfoort, the Netherlands
Caroline Polet
Affiliation:
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
Michel Toussaint
Affiliation:
Independent Researcher, Liège, Belgium
Christophe Snoeck
Affiliation:
Archaeology, Environmental Changes & Geochemistry Research Group, Department of Art Sciences and Archaeology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Laureline Cattelain
Affiliation:
HALMA – Histoire, Archéologie et Littérature des Mondes Anciens, Université de Lille, France Cedarc/Musée du Malgré-Tout, Viroinval, Belgium
*
*Author for correspondence ✉ barbara.veselka@vub.be
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Abstract

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.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Antiquity Publications Ltd
Figure 0

Figure 1. Location of Pommerœul (star), the Gallo-Roman site of Tongeren and the Neolithic sites mentioned in the text (figure by authors).

Figure 1

Table 1. Overview of DNA, radiocarbon dating and isotope data for each skeletal element.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Inhumation grave 26, shown in the original field photograph (left), with bones in anatomical articulation lying on their right side with flexed legs, and with colour added to the bones that were sampled for aDNA analysis (right) (photograph courtesy of Paumen, Wargnies and Demory; Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles; figure by authors).

Figure 3

Figure 3. A) left and right scapulae (posterior aspects); B) left and right os coxae (antero-medial aspects) (figure by authors).

Figure 4

Figure 4. Five adult right first metatarsals and two first proximal foot phalanges from two different non-adults, all found in grave 26 (figure by authors).

Figure 5

Table 2. Relatedness matrix.

Figure 6

Figure 5. OxCal plot showing the calibrated radiocarbon dates on human bones from grave 26 (figure by authors).

Figure 7

Figure 6. Projection of genetic data from the six Pommerœul samples and two Tongeren samples onto a PCA of genetic variation in 999 modern West Eurasian individuals. For comparison, projected data from relevant ancient groups is shown bounded by polygons. WHG: western hunter-gatherers; LBK: Linearbandkeramik (figure by authors).

Figure 8

Figure 7. Inferred IBD segments shared by Pommerœul individual I18605 (cranium) and a pair of siblings from Tongeren (I21058 & I21059). The long shared IBD segment between I18605 and I21058 is visualised in panel a; and for I18605 and the other sibling I21059 in panel b. Both inferred IBD segments are on largely overlapping positions on Chromosome 5. Right: Posterior of ancIBD to be in a non-IBD state along Chromosome 5. We additionally visualise opposing homozygotes (configurations where two individuals have identical genotypes for different alleles) on imputed diploid genotypes. Only markers where both genomes have imputed genotype probabilities higher than 0.99 are depicted. The opposing homozygote signal confirms the presence of the two long IBD segments (they are signalled by the absence of opposing homozygotes because at least one allele has to be shared) (figure by authors).

Figure 9

Figure 8. The cranium from grave 26 (figure by authors).

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