THE IRON, THE BRONZE, AND THE STONE AGES. 675 



To this disquisition on the several Ages of Iron, Bronze, and 

 Stone, I will here append an account of the disinterment of a 

 skeleton of the Iron (Roman) Period, which took place by the 

 permission of the Earl Bathurst, on August a 7, in Oakley Park, 

 during heavy rain, in the presence of the Hon. Mrs. Lennox, the 

 Hon. Miss M. Ponsonby, Professor A. H. Church, Christopher 

 Bowley, Esq., B. A. Anderson, Esq., E. C. Sewell, Esq., and myself. 

 The skeleton was contained in a stone coffin, covered by a flat stone 

 slab, much of the same character as the undoubted Boman cofiins 

 found at York and elsewhere in England, though, unlike many of 

 them, it contained no relic besides the skeleton itself, and a Boman 

 nail, of a tjrpe known at Cirencester. The dimensions of the coffin 

 were : — 



! Length 

 Width at N.E. end 

 Width at S.W. end 



! Length 

 Width at N.E. end 

 Width at S.W. end 



1' 2" 



2' 8"5 



2' 4" 



5' 8" 



i' 5"5 



I 5 . 



Its bearings were from N.E. by E. to S.W. by W., a rather 

 unusual orientation, it being more common to find the feet at a 

 point a little south, than at a point a little north, of the rising 

 sun, deaths being more numerous in the winter than in the sum- 

 mer quarters of the year. The head, however, was at the north- 

 eastward end, and this appears to make it probable that this coffin 

 dates as far back as the time when the Bomans had relinquished 

 the practice of cremation, without accepting the religion, or, at 

 least, the religious practices of Christianity; to a time, that is, 

 between the death of Severus, in the first decade of the third, and 

 the accession of Constantine, in the first decade of the fourth 

 century, a.d. The skeleton was in good preservation; the only 

 disturbance to which it had been subjected, of a violent kind, 

 previous to our exploration, having been quite recently inflicted 

 by some gay young anthropologists from the day school, who, in 

 defiance of the school-board's inspector, had, in their zeal for 

 science, been poking sticks through a chink at the north-east end 

 of the coffin, and had slightly displaced the skull inwards, besides 

 damaging its outer table and exposing the diploe. The lower jaw, 

 however, had not been displaced. On the back of the skull, and 

 also around the first cervical vertebra, there is a considerable 



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