By William Long, Esq. 155 



shells of the district. At Norton Bavant, imbedded among- the 

 human skeletons, he discovered the greater part of a thin curious 

 vase of a wide-mouthed semi-c-lobular form, and which was capable 

 of beiug partially restored. In both instances there is not the 

 slightest trace of ornamentation, either by the pressure of cords or 

 or thongs or by any other process; in this respect the contrast being 

 great with most of the pottery from the round barrows. 



It was fortunate that the opening and re-opening of these long 

 barrows was carried out by one who was thoroughly conversant with 

 craniology, and who was able to turn his scientific examinations to 

 ethnological account. Sir R. C. Hoare and Mr. Cunnington took 

 no note of the character of the skulls they discovered, nor did they 

 preserve them.' The first skull obtained by Dr. Thurnam from an 



' " The priority of the dolichocephalic skulls from the chambered and other 

 long-barrows of Britain, was maintained by the late Mr. Bateman, who made 

 so large a collection of the most ancient crania, associated implements and 

 other remains, from the barrows excavated by himself and friends, in Derby- 

 shire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire. Mr. Bateman assigned the chambered 

 barrows to ' the most remote antiquity, when the sole material for the spear and 

 arrow was flint.' After exploring several such mounds (much less remarkable, 

 however, in the size of their chambers than those of the Dobunian district), he 

 says, ' the interments within the chambers have been many, and apparently 

 continued over some length of time. They are marked by a strongly-defined 

 type of skull, the more obvious feature being excessive elongation, and a 

 laterally compressed appearance, enhanced sometimes by the sagittal suture 

 being elevated into a ridge.' To a later period, he assigned the smaller barrows 

 covering one or two skeletons, accompanied sometimes by objects of bronze in 

 addition to those of flint, the crania from which, he says, are of a short round 

 form." (Ten Years' Diggings, 1861, p. 146; Journal Brit. Arch. Assoc, 1862, 

 vol. vii., p. 210.) In the latter paper, Mr. Bateman says, p. 211: '•While 

 allowing the hazard of any attempt to generalize from data which are somewhat 

 limited and imperfect, I am still induced to claim some degree of consideration 

 for these observations which are of a classifying tendency, from their being the 

 fruit of nine years' close examination of tumuli of many kinds, and a careful 

 comparison of between one and two hundred crania derived from them." Dr. 

 Wilson, the author of " Pre-historic Annals of Scotland," 1861, appears to have 

 been fully alive to the great difference between these two classes of skulls. 

 According to Dr. J. B. Davis, the coadjutor of Dr. Thurnam, in the " Crania 

 Britannioa," the first publication which called attention to the long and short 

 skulls derived from ancient barrows, attributing them to different races, was, 

 " Om Hovedskallerne og Beenradene i vore gamle Gravhole, by Professor Esch- 

 richt, Dansk Fokeblad, 1837, p. 109. — " Cr. Biit." on bkuU from Long Lowe 

 Barrow, Staffordshire. 



