538 



LONG BARROWS. 



a remarkable matter. And I incline to connect this absence of 

 injuries to the cranial vault, observed here, with the singular 

 paucity of any of the stone weapons best calculated to inflict such 

 injuries, axes, namely, or hatchets, in collections of the stone-imple- 

 ments of this district. The penetrating power of a stone-headed 

 arrow is greater by far than we are, previous to experience 1 , inclined 

 to believe ; still its chances of inflicting either a fatal or a disabling 

 wound are, owing to its liability to be deflected, smaller when it 

 strikes such a surface as that of a cranial vault than when it strikes 

 almost any other part of the body except the limbs. Hence an 

 archer ordinarily would aim either at the face or at the trunk ; and 

 hence, perhaps, as the wars of this district at this period would 

 appear to have been carried on with the missile weapons still found 

 in abundance on its surface, we may explain the absence of the 

 cranial injuries which hand-to-hand fighting produces so plentifully. 



On the other hand, a suspicion has sometimes crossed my mind to 

 the effect that the absence of such weapons as axes and hatchets may 

 be explicable by supposing that the people thus destitute of them 

 may have been living peaceable (because isolated) lives. And the all 

 but total absence in this district of any evidence of the practice at 

 this period of cremation 2 may be held to point towards the same ex- 

 planation, which however leaves the limb-lesions unaccounted for. 



It has not been possible to assign any of the long bones with 

 perfect certainty to any of the skulls except in the case of the un- 

 disturbed skeleton. This skeleton was a female skeleton, and its 

 femur with a length of 16-5" gives its owner a stature of 5'. A 

 considerably stronger femur, which there is some reason for assign- 

 ing to one of the male skulls, ' 4 a ' and ' 4 ,' gives a stature of 

 4' 11" to its owner. None of the femora, however, give evidence of 

 a stature above 5' 4", and only one gives even this. In this par- 

 ticular of shortness of stature these stone- using people, males and 

 females, interred in this barrow, resemble the Bretons as described 

 by Professor Broca 3 and Dr. Beddoe 4 ; and in the subequality of 

 the stature of the two sexes they illustrate the principle that, 

 where the stature is low, it is nearly identical for the two sexes. 

 But the fact that these conditions are not reproduced in the other 



1 See Report of Surgical Cases in U. S. A. Army, p. 163, Washington, 1871. 



2 See K. F. Hermann, Antiq., pp. 204-206, cit. Grimm, iiber das Verbrennen der 

 Leichen : Kleinere Schriften, Band ii. p. 288, 1865, in a note added to this edition of 

 his exquisite Memoir, first published in the Berlin Abhandlungen for 1849. 



3 Mdmoires d'Anthropologie, vol. i. p. 323, 1871. 



4 Memoirs Anth. Soc. London, vol. iii. p. 361. 



