CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS. 131 
cover the sides, so as effectually to protect the sepulchral chamber from 
any infiltration of earth. Itlay in a sandy soil, within little more than 
two feet of the surface; but it had probably been covered until a com- 
paratively recent period by a greater depth of earth, as its site was 
higher than the surrounding surface, and possibly thus marked 
the traces of the nearly levelled tumulus. Slight as this elevation 
was it had proved sufficient to prevent the lodgment of water, and 
hence the cist was found perfectly free from damp. Within this a 
‘male skeleton lay on its left side. The arms appeared to have been 
folded over the breast, and the knees drawn up so as to touch the 
‘elbows. The head had been supported by a flat water-worn stone for 
its pillow ; but from this it had fallen to the bottom of the cist, on its 
being detached by the decomposition of the fleshly ligatures; and, as 
is common in crania discovered under similar circumstances, it had 
completely decayed at the part in contact with the ground. A portion 
-of the left side is thus wanting ; but with this exception the skull was 
‘not only nearly perfect when found, but the bones are solid and heavy ; 
and the whole skeleton appeared to me so well preserved as to have 
admitted of articulation. Above the right shoulder, a neat earthen 
vase had been placed, probably with food or drink. It contained only 
-a little sand and black dust when recovered, uninjured, from the spot 
where it had been deposited by affectionate hands many centuries 
before, and is now preserved along with the skull in the Scottish 
Museum of Antiquities. 
As the peculiar forms of certain skulls, such as one described by 
Dr. Thurnam, from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Stone, in Bucking- 
hamshire, * and another from an Indian cemetery at Montreal in 
Lower Canada, + as well as those of numerous distorted crania, from 
the Roman site of Uriconium and other ancient cemeteries, have been 
ascribed to posthumous compression: the precise circumstances atten- 
dant on the discovery of the Juniper Green cist are important, from 
the proof they afford that the body originally deposited within it, had 
lain there undisturbed and entirely unaffected by any superincumbent 
pressure from the day of its interment. Two, if not three, classes of 
skulls have been recovered from early British graves. One with a 
predominant longitudinal diameter, in the most marked examples 
differs so essentially in its elongated and narrow forehead, and occi- 
put from the modern dolichocephalic head, that I was led to assign it to 
* Crania Britannica, Dec. I. p. 38, 
t Edin, Philosoph. Journal, N.S. XVI. p. 269, 
