146 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANATOMICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL 



The direction of these oblique lines alternates in adjacent rows. The 

 ornamentation has evidently been produced by impressions made in 

 the soft clay by a toothed tool, the lines being made up of small 

 rectangular impressions (Plate X., Fig. 4). 



CONCLUSION. 



This group of four short cists presents several features of un- 

 usual interest. They furnish us with examples of burial by inhuma- 

 tion and also by incineration. There is evidence to show that while 

 burial by inhumation was the earlier practice, still inhumation and 

 incineration were partly contemporaneous, and this is borne out by 

 one of the cists of the present group, in which along with a burial by 

 inhumation were also found incinerated remains. 



A short cist may or may not contain a sepulchral urn, but when 

 present, the " beaker " type of urn is usually associated with burial 

 by inhumation, rarely as in one of our cists is it associated with 

 burial by incineration. On the other hand, the " food-vessel " type of 

 urn is usually associated with burial by incineration, and not as in 

 our example with an unburnt skeleton. 



Finally, from an examination of the skeletal remains from these 

 short cists, we find evidence of a people of low stature. Their skulls 

 are of a very brachycephalous type with moderately developed supra- 

 orbital ridges, low breadth - height index, with parieto-occipital 

 flattening, with the face low and broad, and the lower jaw not heavy 

 or strong. The two skulls now described are of a type similar to 

 that of the short cist skulls detailed in my former paper. In that 

 paper I .stated that as regards the origin of these short cist builders, 

 " there seems little doubt but that they were descendants from the 

 short, broad-headed Alpine race that occupied Central Europe about 

 the end of the Stone Age ". Since my paper was read the Hon. John 

 Abercromby 1 has published a paper in which he demonstrates that 

 the beaker" class of sepulchral urn is the oldest Bronze Age ceramic, 

 and that, it is an imported, not a native type, having its centre of dis- 

 1 Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. xxxii., 1902, 



