Archeologists do a lot of work in helping us identify where, when, how, and what fossil or other non-living things are. They have been doing this for a while and it has helped modern science but there are times when they can be wrong or do not get their readings right like when the complete bones of a person are identified as different people.
It is the 1970s, and archeologists discovered a graveyard in a small town known as Pommeroeul near the Belgium-French border. The graveyard was from the 2nd century CE and they believed its occupants were Gallo-Romans who were members of the Celtic tribe during the Roman Empire. In one of the graves, there was an actual skeleton instead of cremated remains and it was this skeleton that was the subject of attraction but unlike what the archeologists believed the entire skeleton was Gallo-Romans, only its skull was Gallo-Roman.
The age of the skeleton wasn't dated using the skeleton, rather they used a bone pin buried with it. They were not wrong to have used the artifact buried with the skeleton but to assume it was Roman, a lot of things needed to have been checked like the position of the skeleton. The skeleton was in a fetal position instead of lying on its back.
It wasn't until 2019 that radiocarbon dating was brought into the picture to help get a proper knowledge of the skeleton’s history. With radiocarbon dating, carbon-14 was looked at to identify the age of the skeleton since we inhale carbon-12 but also once in a while inhale carbon-14 in a very tiny amount. This carbon-14 is radioactive and every 5730 years, half of the carbon-14 decay and breaks down. This keeps happening when we are dead but when we are dead, we aren't replenishing the carbon-12 we have so to get the age, we compare the amount of Carbon-12 to Carbon-14.
With Carbon dating, the graves were indeed confirmed as Gallo-Romans, but the bones from the skeleton were older than the age of the Roman Empire. This was the information we had with us until 2024 when we had more information. The skeleton bones came from the Late Neolithic period ranging from 3333 BCE to 2675 BCE. For the skull, DNA testing showed it belonged to the remains of a Roman woman at the time whose remains were found not far away from the graves and she was 2500 years younger than the other bones in the grave.
Archeologists found that the Hines belonged to 7 different people from different time frames and different regions who were not related. First thought to be an archaeologist error, it was later thrown away as this would be unlikely. A better explanation would be that the bones had been there since the Neolithic time but were then disturbed by the Romans why was the woman’s bone separate, why were the bones not laid to rest on the back, or could it be that someone just dug up bones from different areas to form a skeleton which was then buried? Answers are still far but results could be here anytime soon because studies are still ongoing.
REFERENCE
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/assembling-ancestors
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2454310-a-bizarre-skeleton
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/radiocarbon-dating
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-are-bewildered-by-a-skeleton
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2454310-a-bizarre-skeleton-from-a-roman-grave-has