270 



PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



one of three typical British crania. It is of the same type as the Juniper Green 

 skull, and its strongly marked characteristics are thus defined by him: "Its 

 most interesting peculiarities are its small size, and its decidedly brachyccphalic 

 conformation, 'i'his latter character, which commonly appertains to the ancient 

 Briti?h cranium, and even to that form which we regard as typical, is seldom 

 met with expressed in so marked a manner."* No. 3 is a skull from an Anglo- 

 Saxon ccmi'tery near Litlington, Sussex, one of two of which Dr. Davis remarks : 

 " There is a general indication of good form in these fine capacious skulls, which 

 is ajjparent in every aspect. . . On a review of the whole series of Anglo- 

 Saxon crania which have come under our notice, we are led to conclude that 

 this pleasing oval, rather dolichocephalic form, may best be deserving the epi- 

 thet (if typical among them."t AH the three examples are male skulls. The 

 measvuemcnts embrace the longitudinal frontal, parietal and occipital diameters, 

 with the parietal height and the horizontal circumference: 



1 . U'ey chambered BaiTow skull 



2. Codfoid skull 



3. Litliiiirtou skull 



8.1 

 6.8 



4.7 

 4.6 

 4.7 



5.7 

 5.7 

 5.3 



5.1 



4.6 



P. II. II. c. 



5.1 



4.7 

 4.9 



21.7 



20. 

 20.9 



Each of the above examples presents the features of the type to which it 

 belongs with more than usual prominence, so that if the mean of a large series 

 were tcikcn, the elements of difference between the three Avould be less strongly 

 defined. The differences are, however, those on which their separate classifica- 

 tion depends ; and they thus illustrate the special points on which any cranio- 

 logical comparison for ethnological purposes must be based. Of the three skulls, 

 the era and race of one of them (No. 3) are well determined. It is that of a 

 Saxon, probably of the seventh or eighth century, of the race of the South 

 Saxons, descended from JEWa and his followers, and recovered in a district 

 where the permanency of the same ethnic type is illustrated by its predomi- 

 nance among the rural population at the present day. Another of the selected 

 examples (No. 2) is assumed by Dr. Davis, perhaps on satisfactory grounds, to 

 be an ancient British, i. e., Celtic skull. It is, indeed, a difficulty, which has 

 still to be satisfactorily expla'ued, how it is that if this brachyccphalic type be 

 the true British head-form, no such prevalence of it on modern Celtic areas is to 

 he found, as in the case of Saxon Sussex connects the race of its ancient Pagan 

 and Christian cemeteries, by means of the characteristic ovoid skull, with the 

 Anglo-Saxon population of the present day. The historical race and era with 

 which Dr. Davis appears to connect the Barrow-builders of Wiltshire, is thus 

 indicated in the Crania Britannica: "Region of the Belgjse, Temp. Ptolemaei, 

 A.D. 120." The Belgaj of that era — then apparently comparatively recent in- 

 truders, and by some regarded as not Celtic but Germanic — were displaced, if 

 not exterminated ; but the uiodern Britons of Wales are undoubted descendants 

 of British Celts of Ptolemy's age. Though doubtless mingling Saxon and Nor- 

 man with pure British blood, they probably preserve the native British type as 

 little modified by foreign admixture as is that of its supplanters in the most 

 thoroughly Saxon or Anglish districts of England. It is, therefore, a question 

 of some importance how far the extreme brachycephalic proportions of the so- 

 called British type may be traceable to other than inherited ethnical character- 

 istics; whether, in fact, it is not entirely due to the undesigned flattening of tho 



*Crania Britannica, Dec. ii, pi. 14. 



t Crania Britannica, Pec. iv, pis. 39, 40. 



