PHYSICAL CllAKACTEllISTICS. 127 



be said that the one was much more nvimerous than the other, 

 as heads of the two types have been found in the barrows in about 

 equal proportions. In this respect the wolds give a somewhat 

 different testimony to that which is afforded by the round barrows 

 in other parts of Britain ; although the weapons, implements, 

 ornaments, and pottery associated with burials in the various 

 districts, including the wolds, are so identical as to show that the 

 people who made and used them must have arrived at a very 

 similar state of culture, and must also have been connected by one 

 tie or another. By far the larger number of skulls which have been 

 recovered from the barrows and cists of the greater part of Britain 

 are brachy-cephalic, so much so, indeed, as to have caused 

 Dr. Thurnam, whose experience was considerable, to use the 

 expression ' round barrows, round skulls \' If we are to judge 

 from the barrows themselves, the long-headed people vvho buried in 

 the long barrows must have been more numerous in some other 

 parts of England than on the wolds, as for instance in Wiltshire 

 and the adjoining country, where sepulchral mounds of this shape 

 are much more plentiful than they are in East Yorkshire. On the 

 other hand, the dolicho-cephalic head is far more abundant in the 

 round barrows of the wolds than in the similar-shaped mounds of 

 the South-west of England. The conclusion then at which we 

 seem to arrive appears to be this — that the earlier long-headed 

 people were more completely eradicated by the intrusive round- 

 heads in Wiltshire than they were in East Yorkshire, unless, which 

 is not probable, the balance in the latter country was restored by 

 later immigrations of the dolicho-cephalic people. 



When we come to consider the physical characteristics of these 

 two distinct peoples we observe at once a wide difference in their 

 appearance. The long-headed one does not seem to have been 

 either so tall or so strongly made as the other. The average 

 height of the first may be taken to be about 5 ft. 6 in. ; that of the 

 other as about an inch more. The dolicho-cephalic people were 

 also of a somewhat softer outline, in all the features of the head 

 and face, than the more rugged brachy-cephalic people. The cheek 



' ' The form of the skull, from the bowl-shaped, bell-shaped, and other circular 

 barrows of pre- Roman Britain, scarcely requires extensive illustration; being on all 

 hands admitted to be brachy-cephalous. This was the decided opinion of the late 

 Mr. Bateman; and it is even insisted on by Dr. D. Wilson. . . . My friend and 

 colleague Dr. Biirnard Davis . . . regards the brachy-cephalous as the "typical form of 

 cranium of the Ancient Briton." ' Thurnam, Principal Forms of British and Gaulish 

 Skulls —Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, vol. i. p. 149. 



