XIII. 



ON THE VARIOUS FOEMS OF THE SO-CALLED 

 'CELTIC CRANIUM. 



Professor Nilsson, eighteen years ago, declared that he con- 

 sidered nothing more vague and uncertain than the form of the 

 Celtic cranium 1 ; and Professor Ecker 2 has expressed himself in 

 much the same language as to the Roman cranium : the latter of 

 these two authors, however, has done much towards removing 

 some of the uncertainty of which he complains. Upon these two 

 points I should wish here to make a few remarks. Under the head 

 of pre-Roman skulls, found in Britain, most writers would be agreed 

 that three distinct types may be classed — as the f River-bed' type 

 of Professor Huxley, the brachy cephalic type of Dr. Thurnam, and 

 the dolichocephalic ' pre-Celtic type ' of the same author. I have to 

 say that a dolichocephalic cranium, distinct from the dolichocephalic 

 Celtic cranium found in the long barrows, exists in addition to these 

 three types, with the latter of which, I believe, it is sometimes con- 

 founded. Representatives of this type of crania may be found in a 

 cast in the easily accessible Museum of the London College of Sur- 

 geons, and in another cast, made by Dr. Thurnam, and now widely 

 circulated, of a cranium procured by me, through the kindness of 

 J. C. Athorpe, Esq., from a barrow near Dinnington, in South 

 Yorkshire; and, finally, in no less than thirty-two crania or 

 calvaria, which the inexhaustible civility of William Aldworth, Esq., 

 has enabled me to procure from an all but equally inexhaustible 

 cemetery on his estate at Frilford. First, of the cast in the 

 College of Surgeons ; in the Catalogue of the Osteological Series 

 it may be found described thus at No. 5709 : { A plaster cast of 



1 'Crania Britannica,' Letter to Dr. Thurnam, p. 17. 



2 ■ Archiv for Anthropologic,' bd. ii. hft. i. no. 



