TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — UEPT. ANTlIEOrOLOGY. 617 



paper wbicli will be laid before the Department by Mr. Hvde Clarke. On the whole 

 it seems to me safer to follow Professor Rollestou in sf eaking of the dark pre-Keltic 

 element as Silurian rather than as Basque or as Iberian.' (' British Barrows,' p. G30.') 



There is, however, quite another quarter to which the anthropologist who is 

 engaged in this investigation may turn with fair promise of reward. I need 

 scarcely remind anyone in this department of the singularly suggestive paper which 

 was written more than fifteen years ago by the late Dr. Thurnam, ' On the Two 

 Principal Forms of Ancient British and Gaulish Skulls.' ^ The long-continued 

 researches of this eminent archaeological anatomist led him to the conclusion that 

 the oldest sepulchres of this country — the chambered and other long barrows which 

 he explored in ^N'ilts and Gloucestershire— invariably contained the remains of a 

 dolichocephalic people, who were of short stature, and apparently were un- 

 acquainted with the use of metals. The absence of metal would alone raise a 

 suspicion that these elongated tumuli were older than the round, couoidal, or bell- 

 shaped barrows, which contain objects of bronze, if not of iron, with or without 

 weapons of stone, and commonlj' associated with the remains of a taller brachy- 

 cephalic people. 



Even before Dr. Thurnam forcibly pointed attention to this distinction, it 

 had been independently observed by so experienced a barrow-opener as the late 

 Mr. Bateman,^ whose researches were conducted in quite another part of the 

 country— the district of the ancient Cornavii. Moreover, Professor Daniel Wilson's 

 studies in Scotland had led him to conclude that the earliest population of Britain 

 were dolichocephalic, and possessed, in fact, a form of skull which, from its boat- 

 like shape, he termed kmnbecephalic* Nor should it be forgotten that as far back 

 as 1844 the late Sir W. E. Wilde expressed his belief that in Ireland the most 

 ancient type of skull is a long skull, which he held to belong to a dark-com- 

 plexioned people, probably aboriginal, who were succeeded by a fair, roimd-headed 

 race.* 



But while this succession of races was recognised by several observers, it re- 

 mained for Dr. Thurnam to formulate the relation between the shape of the skuU 

 and that of the barrow in a neat aphorism which has become a standing dictum in 

 anthropolog}- — ' Long barrows, long skulls : round barrows, round skulls ; dolieho- 

 taphic barrows, dolichocephalic crania; brachytaphic barrows, brachycephalic 

 crania.' No doubt exceptional cases may occur in which roimd skulls have been 

 found in long barrows, but these have generally been explained as being due to 

 secondary interments. On the other hand, the occasional presence of long skulls 

 in round barrows presents no difficulty, since no one supposes that the early doli- 

 cbocephali were exterminated by the "brachycephali, and it is therefore probable 

 that during the bronze-using period, when round tumuli were in general use, the 

 two peoples may have dwelt side by side, the older race being, perhap.s, in a state 

 of subjugation. 



It 'is not pretended that Thurnam's apophthegm has more than a local appli- 

 cation. ' This axiom,' its author admitted, ' is evidently not applicable unless 

 with considerable limitations, to France.' Although it is here called an ' axiom,' 

 it is by no means a self-evident proposition, the relation between the shape of the 

 skull and the shape of the burial-mound being purely arbitrary. The proposition 

 which connects the two is simply the expression of the results of accumulated 

 observations, and it is of course open to doubt whether the number of observations 

 was sufficiently great to warrant the generalisation. But the only test of the 

 validity of any induction lies in its verification when applied to fresh instances, 



' W. von Humboldt in his famous essay, ' Priifung der Untersuchungen iiber die 

 Urbewohner Hispaniens vermittelst der Vaskischen .Sprache,' does not admit, on 

 philological evidence, any extension of the Iberians to this countrj'. See c. 44 : ' Uebcr 

 den Aufenthalt Iberischer Volkerschaften ausserhiilb Iberien ; in den von Celteu 

 bewohnten Liindern.' 



^ Memoirs of the Anthrojf. Soc. Lovd. vol. i. 1865, p. 120 ; vol. iii. 1870, p. 41. 



' Ten Years' Diggings, 1861, p. 146. 



* Prehistmic Annals of Scotland, 1851. 



* On the Ethnology of the Ancient Irish. 



