A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
THE BRONZE AGE 
The later Celtic Aryans or Celtz were a tall race, the males averaging 
in height 5 ft. 84 in., and the women were also tall. The skulls of the 
Celta were broad or round, as seen from above, with strongly developed 
brow ridges and powerful jaws. 
Their houses were bee-hive huts, of stone where procurable ; else- 
where, as in Bedfordshire, the houses were of hewn planks and clay, 
roofed with straw or fern. Pottery was made, but the potter's wheel was 
unknown. Dyers used dyes of various colours. The trades of the bronze- 
smith and bronze-founder were introduced. The husbandmen used sickles 
of bronze. A vast number of bronze articles were imported, and others 
were made in southern Britain where civilization was higher than in the 
north and the midlands. 
The people of the bronze age usually disposed of their dead by 
burning, but as bronze age customs progressed very slowly it is not un- 
common to find evidences of cremation and inhumation in one and the 
same round tumulus. Sometimes a central and older interment of a tumu- 
lus may represent inhumation, and subsequent interments round the circum- 
ference represent cremation, or cremations and inhumations may occur side 
by side round the circumference. In a cremation burial the small pieces 
of burnt bone were carefully collected and placed in a cinerary urn, which 
was then buried in the tumulus. In several instances on Dunstable Downs 
mere holes have been dug in the chalk near the circumference of the 
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