72 A Description of the Skeleton foimd 



courteous assistance they rendered on this occasion. The success 

 of the opening of these barrows is in a large measure to be attributed 

 to their persevering energy. 



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The following description of the skeleton has been kindly fur- 

 nished by George Kolleston, Esq., M.D., F.R.S., Professor of 

 Anatomy and Physiology, Oxford : — 



" Of the skull and bones sent to me from Rockley Barrow I have 

 to say that they appear to me to have belonged to a strong man of 

 little if anything above 5 feet 5 inches in stature, and considerably 

 past the middle period of life. He had suffered a good deal from 

 the rheumatic exostosis which so commonly plagued the former in- 

 habitants of this country in every grade of life ; but on the other 

 hand he appears to have retained his full adult complement of thirty- 

 two teeth to the time of death. It is possible that out of some 

 two or three sockets now filled with earth the teeth may have dropped 

 out a short time before the death of their owner ; it can, however, have 

 been only a short time, as the sockets are but little absorbed. The 

 teeth are very much worn, in some cases to below the level of the 

 enamel ; but there is no indication, except in one case, of any alveolar 

 abscess having followed upon this severe tare and tret. In an ill-fed 

 subject the case would have been very different, as Mr. Mummery 

 has shewn in his paper on " Dental Caries," in the " Transactions of 

 the Odontological Society of Great Britain," November, 1869, vol. 

 ii., 1869, pp. 47, 51, 54, 60, 63. 



"^As regards the affinities of the owner of the skull, I should, if 

 allowed to speculate upon the evidence furnished by the osteological 

 remains only, say that we have here one of the hybrids produced by 

 the intercrossing of the tall brachycephalic bronze folk with the 

 short but dolichocephalic race of the long barrow — and stone with 

 bone implement — period. For the characters both of skull andskeleton 

 are intermediate between those of these two sets of men. The short 

 stature ; the lowness of skull as well as of stature, and the ortho- 

 gnathous character of the jaw, albeit a little exaggerated by senile 

 absorption, point to the earlier stock ; whilst the strength of the 

 bones, skeletal and cranial both, and the brachycephalic character 



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