PARISH OF UPPER SWELL, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 529 



as this ill long- barrows and in other interments of the same 

 period, that we may ascribe some of the statements which have 

 been made as to the co-existence of brachy-cephalic with dolicho- 

 cephalic crania in these early times. 



The third interment (3) was undisturbed, the sole instance in 

 this barrow. A very nearly perfect skeleton of a woman between 

 20 and 25 years of ag-e and 5 ft. in stature, with a low dolicho- 

 cephalic cranium, was found a little to the E.S.E. of 'No. 2, 

 lying- upon the right side with the face northwards, occupying, 

 with the knees drawn up, a space of 3 ft.;, and having one arm 

 lying across the body. The Eev. David Eoyce, who discovered 

 and removed it, reports thus as to the arrangement of the 

 stones about the skeleton : ' Some pains had been taken with the 

 resting-place. The stones at the feet lay in the form of pitching ; 

 under the body they were flat, but at the sides they lay sloping 

 outwards. A large projecting stone over the head appeared to 

 have been laid for protection of the skull. This piece of con- 

 struction was 2 ft. 9 in. across at the head, and 1 ft. 3 in. across 

 at the feet.' The protection which this construction had furnished 

 had been sufficient to preserve the bones from the great wearing 

 away which the drip of water, acting on surfaces gnawed by ro- 

 dents, has produced in many of the bones from this barrow, without 

 keeping them so entirely intact as to make one suspect that they 

 are of a materially later date than these others. One tibia, one 

 femur, and both fibulae, as well as some other bones, have, though 

 found in situ, old breakages with the fracture-surfaces stained with 

 oxide of iron, showing that the breakages which have so greatly 

 multiplied the number of osteological specimens from this barrow 

 are not by any means all to be ascribed to the rough handling which 

 displacement on behalf of fresh interments implies. Some of the 

 bones of this skeleton have suffered from the gnawing of voles, 

 some from the boring and channelling of the larvae of some beetle, 

 which has reproduced in a minor degree the ravages of Anobium in 

 the wood, and Hylargus or Scoli/tus in the bark of trees. One of 

 the tibiae shows some slight blackening, due probably to the same 

 agency as that which has very extensively and strikingly affected 

 many of the other skeletons from this barrow, viz. the manganic 

 oxide. These particulars go some way, when coupled with the con- 

 tracted position of the skeleton, towards proving that this skeleton 

 is of the same race and date as the others found in this barrow. 

 As will be more fully explained elsewhere, the cranial characters of 



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