212 YORKSHIRE. EAST RIDING. 



too were like those which have been so often noticed, except that one 

 had been made use of for lighting a large fire in, and that they 

 contained more animal bones, potsherds, and chippings of flint than 

 perhaps is common. Had the bodies occurred without the necklace, 

 fibula, or armlets, I should not have hesitated the least about 

 classing these four barrows with the other barrows in the immediate 

 vicinity, which were of the time of stone, or more probably of 

 bronze, and contained implements of flint and earthenware vessels 

 of the ordinary round barrow type. 



This important inference may perhaps not unfairly be deduced 

 from these facts : That no new people had come in with iron, but 

 that acquaintance with and use of this metal were gradually 

 developed amongst an originally bronze-using people, either 

 according to the natural process of improvement characteristic of 

 man, or through knowledge gained by contact and intercourse, in 

 whatever way, with people who had already attained to a higher 

 grade of civilisation. 



The number of burials discovered in Britain which may be 

 attributed with any certainty to the early time of the use of iron 

 is very small, and this contrasts strongly with what is found to be 

 the case in some parts of Germany, in Switzerland, France and Italy, 

 and seems to imply that the period which elapsed between the 

 introduction of iron and the time when Britain became more or 

 less under Roman rule and influence was but short. Still, even 

 upon this supposition, it is difficult to account for the paucity of 

 burials belonging to the time in question. A greater number seem 

 to have been discovered in Yorkshire than in all the rest of 

 England '. 



There is a fact in connection with the form of skull of the people 

 of the Early Iron Age which it may be well to notice here it is 

 dolicho-cephalic ; nor does it differ from many of the skulls which 

 have been found in some of the barrows belonging to a time ante- 

 cedent to the introduction of iron into Britain, and in those barrows 

 discovered with other skulls of a markedly brachy-cephalic type. 

 An explanation of this has suggested itself to me, which however I 

 lay before the reader with some hesitation. It has been held by 

 most of those who have considered the subject that the form of skull 

 belonging to the earliest occupants of the country in neolithic 

 times is a typically dolicho-cephalic one. In this I entirely agree, 



1 An account of all the burials of the period in question with which I am acquainted 

 will be found in the Introduction, p. 50 n. 



