222 DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES OF SKULLS. 



that it belonged to a woman. As regards the age of its owner, 

 there is also room for doubting whether the full term of sixty 

 years assigned by Dr. Thurnam had really been attained to. 

 All the sutures are ' ossified and nearly effaced ' in some dolicho- 

 cephalic skulls from long barrows and of this period, e. g. 

 { Rudstone, cexxiv. 1,' a skull from the same long barrow as 

 ' Rudstone, cexxiv. 4 ' described above, whose owners had certainly 

 not attained half that age. Comparatively little however need or 

 ought in this case to be staked upon a determination of these two 

 points of sex and age. 



The denticulations of the posterior fifth of the sagittal suture can 

 be seen, in spite of the closure of the suture, to have been long and 

 complex, as they often are in these synostotic skulls ; in the 

 penultimate fifth the suture is entirely obliterated, and its course 

 is partly occupied by a nodular exostosis, to the left of which a large 

 foramen emissarium is to be seen ; the rest of the suture is barely 

 traceable. The squamosal suture however and its additamentum 

 have escaped anchylosis ; and the coronal suture is complexly 

 denticulated on both sides. 



The frontal bone is slightly carinate over the segment corre- 

 sponding with the junction of its ' facies frontalis' with its vertical 

 aspect. The sites of its tubera are scarcely identifiable, though 

 those of the parietal can still be recognised. The ectorbital process 

 which is preserved is strong, the frontal sinuses are only moderately 

 developed. 



Among the fragmentary bones from the Ebberston long barrow 

 there came into my hands a portion of a lower jaw which combined, 

 as jaws from these barrows not rarely do, great thickness in the 

 molar region together with 1 a feebly developed chin. If this jaw, 

 or one equally weighty, belonged to this skull, as it may very 

 possibly have done, we may then explain the fact of the low and 

 retreating forehead by a reference to the principle of balance already 

 (p. 190) referred to; a very low basis cranii may also have contri- 

 buted to its formation. It may have been to skulls like this that 

 Sir Richard Colt Hoare 2 referred when speaking of crania from a 

 long barrow at Stoney Littleton in the county of Somerset as 

 being ' fronte valde depressa.' 



1 Also a canine with socket bifid for a doubly fanged tooth. 



2 ' Archaeologia,' vol. xix. p. 46, 182 1, 



