290 GENERAL REMARKS 



shifting of soil or the downward settling- of stones upon them. The 

 first effect of such agencies appears to be the forcing inwards of the 

 basi-cranial bones, a process analogous to that which Dr. Barnard 

 Davis has described as taking place in the senile living body, and 

 which other writers have spoken of as ' impressio baseos cranii.' The 

 second effect upon the vault of the skull thus deprived of its basal 

 support may take either the direction of flattening out of the arch 

 or that of compression of it from side to side. Those who are most 

 familiar with the multiform and even grotesque shapes into which 

 skulls thus crushed are distorted, and with the cleanness and sharpness 

 and extent of the fissures, which pass sometimes more than half 

 over their transverse arcs, will be slowest to accept Dr. Thurnam's 

 interpretation of the fractured skulls in question. Until the frac- 

 tures of which Dr. Thurnam has written are shown to me in a skull 

 with its basi-cranial bones left, as they might be in a sacrificed 

 victim, uninjured and in situ, I shall hesitate to refer them to the 

 working of any but one of the two following verae causae^ viz. (a) 

 settling or sinking of the soil or stones in which the skulls have 

 been laid ; (b) the disturbance and violence necessitated by succes- 

 sive interments, and resulting, as has often been said, in a ' strangely 

 huddled/ ' irregular, confused ' packing together of a great many 

 skeletons in a very small space. The first of these causes I believe 

 to have been the most frequent ; the second, I am well assured, 

 accounts for the injuries observable in the Rodmarton 1 and the 

 Swell crania. Desiccation and other alterations of various kinds 

 may often have powerfully co-operated towards the production of 

 fissures in these skulls ; but whilst the cracking of other organic 

 bodies forbids us to forget the influence of drying, the way in 

 which skulls are often found almost entirely ' perished ' makes it 

 clear that we must not leave chemical activities out of sight. These 

 however would not be competent alone to produce lesions which 

 could anyhow be mistaken for wounds. 



There can, I allow, be no doubt that skeletons, burnt and un- 



were associated — a bronze knife, a perforated stone axe, a hammer of micaceous grit, 

 and a flint implement. 



1 Of the chamber in the Rodmarton barrow, which contained no less than thirteen 

 skeletons, Canon Lysons wrote thus: — ' Although most of the human bones exhibited 

 no traces of cremation, some few had been burnt. The bones were all in great con- 

 fusion, and some had been dragged into a corner.' — ' Proc. Soc. Ant. Lond.,' 1863, 

 vol. ii. p. 278. [The Swell crania are described in Article XVIII of this volume. Ed.] 



