704 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



inches, 10^, 9i, 8^, aud Gi ; and specimens from the ancient burial-place 

 give diameters of 20, 14^, 12, 9^,8, and 5 inches, respectively. The bead- 

 like dots around the margin of Fig. 23 indicate holes punched from the 

 inside of the vessel at intervals of about three-fourths of an inch, made 

 with the end of a round stick about the size of a lead-pencil. The dots 

 upon the outside indicate corresponding elevations made by the point of 

 the stick being pushed nearly through. This method of ornamentation 

 was found upon specimens in mounds Nos. 6 and 15, in specimens from 

 the ancient cemetery, and in fragments found on an old village site, 3 

 miles west of Winchester. 



The theory of a uniform typical skull-form for all the nations of the 

 New World presented by Dr. Morton in his great work Crania Ameri- 

 cana^ so ably seconded by Dr. Nott in Types of Manldnd indorsed by 

 Humboldt, and for a time acquiesced in by American ethnologists, first 

 challenged by Professor Eetzius in 1859,* and again by Dr. Daniel Wil- 

 son in 18C2,t may now be considered to have been completely over- 

 thrown. 



It may be safely said tbat exami)les of all the various forms which the 

 mania for skull classification has distinguished may be found among 

 the various tribes of the New World yet living, as well as in crania ex- 

 humed from the ancient burial-places of extinct tribes. 



Although the material for generalization is yet scanty, the same may 

 be affirmed of the mound-builders and stone-grave race. The plan here- 

 tofore followed in attempting to establish a typical skull-form both for 

 the modern Indian and the mound-builders is wholly unsatisfactory and 

 fallacious. Let us assume an experiment exceeding in magnitude any- 

 thing yet attempted in that line, for upon the theory adopted, the greater 

 the number of skulls examined the more the probability that the typical 

 form ascertained is the correct one; and if we find this experiment open 

 to great sources of error which we have no means of eliminating, we 

 may safely conclude that the attempts made upon a much smaller scale 

 have failed to furnish us any reliable information. Let us take one 

 thousand skulls, ten skulls from each of one hundred tribes scattered 

 from Hudson's Bay to Patagonia. We tabulate all the various meas- 

 urements, longitudinal, i^arietal, frontal, vertical, &c.,aud by this means 

 strive to obtain a typical skull. It may be that not five of the whole 

 number conform to this type, and it may be that each of these belonged 

 to one tribe. In attempting thus to establish a typical skull-form for a 

 hundred tribes we assume a fact which does not exist, viz, that there is 

 an average uniformity in the skull-forms of the various hundred tribes, 

 or, in other words, that the average variation of skull-forms is the same 

 in all these tribes. Secondly, we assume that the ten skulls taken rep- 

 resent fairly the variations of skull-forms in the particular tribe. This 

 may be true or it may not. For exami)le, every skull obtained may, by 



* Smithsonian Report, 1859, p. 264. 

 t Ibid, 186-i, p. 240 et seq. 



i 



