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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 774 



have been registered, catalogued and made avail- 

 able to students. 



President Myres reported for the committees on 

 excavations of Roman sites in Great Britain and 

 on the preparation of a new edition of " Notes 

 and Queries on Anthropology." The latter will 

 appear within the coming year. 



The committee on archeological and ethnograph- 

 ical researches in Crete presented the following 

 interim report from Mr. C. H. Hawes, who was 

 able to return to Crete in the spring of 1909. In 

 view of the important results outlined in this 

 report, and of the possibility of a longer stay in 

 Crete than Mr. Hawes originally contemplated, 

 the committee asks to be reappointed, with a fur- 

 ther grant. 



BEPOET FROM ME. C. H. HAWES 



A piece of good fortune was met with at the 

 opening of this season's work. During October, 

 1908, four skulls, two portions of other crania, 

 several pelvic and long bones, came to light in the 

 course of deepening a well in the alluvial bank of 

 an ancient river ten minutes east of Candia. The 

 argillaceous deposit in which they lay had acted 

 as a natural plaster of Paris, and we are now in 

 possession of human osseous remains of not later 

 than the Middle Minoan I. period, in the most 

 extraordinary state of preservation. Complete 

 measurements and observations have been made 

 upon these, and I hope to publish them at an 

 early date with a comparison of those discovered 

 by Dr. Duckworth in 1903. 



In attacking the problem of how to discover or 

 uncover the ancient stratum among the modern 

 people, I have addressed myself to the task of find- 

 ing out and isolating, if possible, alien elements 

 of historical times. Representatives of Turkish 

 and old Venetian families have been approached, 

 and genealogical, traditional and historical infor- 

 mation garnered, with a view of testing them 

 anthropometrically. For example, one village at 

 which I am to stay this week claims to contain 

 only descendants of Venetians who have strictly 

 refused exogamous marriages. A small Armenian 

 colony has existed in Candia since the Turkish 

 occupation in 1669, and inasmuch as the Armenoid 

 type of head is met with in the east end of the 

 island, whether of historic or prehistoric date, 

 this little band of settlers is being measured. 

 Albanian influence has been suspected in Crete, 

 and rightly so, since for various reasons the 

 Turkish Janissaries in the island included large 

 numbers of these Europeans, and considerable 

 mixture resulted. In view also of the Dorian 



occupation of Crete and the belief in certain quar- 

 ters that Illyria largely furnished the Dorian 

 hosts, it seemed important to get at the Albanian 

 type. Records of these and other peoples to be 

 met with in the island were in my possession, but 

 I was anxious to attempt the method of race 

 analysis by contours of the living head. During 

 my short stay at Athens I was able, by the aid of 

 Mr. Steele, of the Lake Copais Company, to pay a 

 flying visit to an Albanian village in the moun- 

 tains to the northeast of the lake. There, in the 

 village of Martino, reputed to be the purest of five 

 such, I measured forty individuals and obtained 

 contours of their heads by means of an instrument 

 which I had just completed. 



The problem has been attacked from another 

 direction. What modification of the cephalic 

 index and the shape of the head has been effected 

 by artificial deformation or formation of the 

 head? I am indebted to Professor Macalister for 

 calling my attention to the importance of this 

 factor. It is a custom which is far more prevalent 

 than is dreamed of, and thousands of people in 

 this island, mostly of the male sex, are unaware of 

 a custom which is universal except among the 

 Mussulmans and the better educated minority of 

 urban population. As to the reason and methods 

 of such head shaping, I hope to enter into details 

 in a separate paper. The first object was to gauge 

 the effect on the cephalic index and the contours. 

 At the outset it is necessary to distinguish be- 

 tween the results of intentional formation and in- 

 voluntary deformation due to the lying on hard 

 surfaces. For these purposes I am making com- 

 parisons between subjects who have and have not 

 undergone head shaping, and between those who 

 have and have not suffered from a pillowless in- 

 fancy. Striking examples of the latter are to be 

 found among the small colony of Epirote bakers, 

 who, owing to the extreme poverty of their parents 

 at home, the circumstances of which I shall enter 

 into more fully elsewhere, possess the most extraor- 

 dinary and incredible head-shapes it has been 

 my lot to see. Similar observations are being 

 made upon the Armenian settlement here. Ob- 

 servations on these two extreme forms of head 

 will prove instructive in comparison with the 

 results of similar, though modified, treatment of 

 the Cretan native. Further, whole families of 

 Cretans are under observation, and measurements 

 and contours have been taken of them, including 

 children who have and have not been bandaged in 

 their infancy, from the age of fourteen days up. 



In addition to these researches which are in 



