I 9 4 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



manufacture of implements and weapons, and the use of 

 bronze for similar purposes. The two periods undoubtedly 

 overlapped. It has been customary to regard this over- 

 lapping as if bronze-using man had continued for a period 

 to employ the same substances in making useful articles as 

 did his Neolithic predecessors ; that time was required before 

 the more costly bronze, imported from foreign sources, 

 replaced the native materials, and that consequently both 

 groups of objects became associated in the same grave. 



Additional light is thrown on the mixture of objects 

 representing different stages of culture in the same interment 

 by a collection of goods from the grave of an aboriginal 

 Australian, buried about fifty years ago, recently brought 

 under my notice by Dr. R. Broom. Along with the skeleton 

 were found a clay pipe, an iron spoon, the remains of a 

 rusted pannikin, the handle of a pocket-knife, and a large 

 piece of flint. The handle of the knife, with its steel back, 

 had doubtless been used along with the flint for the purpose 

 of obtaining fire, as in Neolithic times a similar office was 

 discharged by flint and a nodule of pyrites. These ac- 

 companiments of the Australian interments show that men 

 in a lower grade of culture and intellectual power utilise, as 

 opportunity offers, objects representing a much higher stage of 

 civilisation. It is possible, therefore, that some of the mixed 

 interments ascribed to the Bronze Age may be the graves 

 of Neolithic men who, in conjunction with articles of their 

 own manufacture, had employed the material introduced by 

 a bronze-using race, with whom they had been brought in 

 contact, and whose usages they had more or less imitated. 



That the inhabitants of prehistoric Scotland were not a 

 homogeneous people, but exhibited different types in their 

 physical configuration, so as to justify the conclusion that 

 they were not all of the same race, has long been accepted 

 by archaeologists. The first observer who made a definite 

 statement, based on anatomical data, was the late Sir Daniel 

 Wilson, in his well-known " Prehistoric Annals of Scotland." 

 Whilst admitting that the material at his disposal was scanty, 

 he thought that he was justified in stating that the primitive 

 race in Scotland possessed an elongated dolichocephalic head, 

 which he termed boat-shaped, or kumbecephalic. This race, 



