:2~>o J'lrhixtorir Ai'rh<(>/<></// qf Cambridgeshire 



care by those who discover them, and for this reason there is 

 Wanting most of the evidence upon which an estimate of the 

 stature and development in physique of the ancient inhabitants 

 of Cambridgeshire might be based. Of skulls however a iair 

 number is available. A general review of these shews most 

 distinctly that from the earliest period represented, whether 

 from the tumuli in association with the long-barrow mode of 

 interment, from settlements of lloman date, or from A nu In- 

 Saxon, or Komano-Britisli cemeteries, down to mediaeval ami 

 even later and modern times, the prevailing skull form has 

 been that of an elongated ovoid, described technically as 

 dolicho-cephalic. The statement must be slightly qualified 

 by adding that the degree of narrowness is not extreme, that 

 the long skulls border on the province of those of mean pro- 

 portions (i.e. neither very long nor very broad) which indeed 

 also actually occur. But short broad skulls are distinctly rare, 

 and are not infrequently associated with post-Norman remains, 

 which suggests that the Norman Conquest may have been 

 accompanied by an influx of round-headed foreigners in this 

 district. Such an incursion would be only one of many to 

 which it is practically certain Cambridgeshire in common with 

 the rest of East Anglia has been subjected from periods much 

 earlier than the 4th and 5th centuries when immigrations 

 occurred on a large scale. Some of the immigrants may have 

 been round-headed Danes, but the majority were Scandi- 

 navians, Angles, and certain Belgic tribes, whose skull-form 

 was characteristically narrow, and who blended with the native 

 population with the resulting skull-form that is seen to charac- 

 terise the Romano -British of our collections. It is practically 

 impossible to attribute any special specimens to particular 

 tribes or clans: thus we remain in complete ignorance of the 

 head-form prevailing among the Iceni and among the Girvii, 

 the principal clan of fen-dwellers. At Brandon specimen* 

 occur which have been identified by Dr Myers with a type 

 well-known on the continent as the "Batavian." 



The average stature of such individuals as have hern dis- 



