XXII. 



DESCRIPTION OF A HUMAN SKELETON FOUND 

 IN A BAEEOW AT EOCKLEY 1 . 



Of the skull and bones sent to me from Rockley barrow I have 

 to say that they appear to me to have belonged to a strong- man of 

 little if anything above 5 feet 5 inches in stature, and considerably 

 past the middle period of life. He had suffered a good deal from 

 the rheumatic exostosis which so commonly plagued the former in- 

 habitants of this country in every grade of life ; but on the other 

 hand he appears to have retained his full adult complement of 

 thirty-two teeth to the time of death. It is possible that out of 

 some two or three sockets now filled with earth the teeth may have 

 dropped out a short time before the death of their owner ; it can, 

 however, have been only a short time, as the sockets are but little 

 absorbed. The teeth are very much worn, in some cases to below 

 the level of the enamel ; but there is no indication, except in one 

 case, of any alveolar abscess having followed upon this severe tare 

 and tret. In an ill-fed subject the case would have been very dif- 

 ferent, as Mr. Mummery has shown in his paper on t Dental Caries,' 

 in the ' Transactions of the Odontological Society of Great Britain,' 

 November, 1869, vol. ii. pp. 47, 51, 54, 60, 63. 



As regards the affinities of the owner of the skull, I should, if 

 allowed to speculate upon the evidence furnished by the osteological 

 remains only, say that we have here one of the hybrids produced by 

 the intercrossing of the tall brachy cephalic bronze folk with the 

 short but dolichocephalic race of the long barrow — and stone with 



1 [In August 1879, the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society were 

 present at the opening of an early British bowl-shaped barrow, on the estate of 

 W. H. Tanner, Esq., of Rockley. An account of the opening was given by H. 

 Cunnington, Esq., in the Proceedings of the Society, and the skeleton was described 

 by Professor Eolleston. — Editor.] 



