THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 177 



had been constructed during the stone age period ; some of the dead had been 

 cremated, whilst others had been deposited on the floor of the chambers. The 

 skulls had been destroyed or so much injured that they were not preserved, 

 except one from the Cairn of Get, Caithness. This was examined by Dr Carter 

 Blake,* who regarded it as that of a man about fifty, with capacious forehead, 

 large parietal eminences, projecting supraoccipital squama, supraciliary ridges not 

 prominent, lower jaw massive, chin prominent, greatest length of cranium 183 mm., 

 greatest breadth 140 mm., cephalic index 76, facial angle 80°. The skull was 

 without doubt in its main features dolichocephalic in form, though somewhat 

 exceeding in its length-breadth index the upper numerical limit of that group. 



Chambered cairns, though not with horn-like prolongations, from Argyllshire 

 and the Orkneys, have also been described by Dr Anderson ; some were circular, 

 others oblong in form, and they corresponded in the character of their contents. 

 The skull from a chambered cairn with three compartments at Papa Westray, 

 Orkney, opened by Mr George Petrie,| has been preserved in the National 

 Museum, E.T. 21. It is that of a man advanced in life; cranium 196 mm. long, 

 144 mm. broad, cephalic index 73*5, dolichocephalic. Vertex inclined to be flattened, 

 height 139 mm., vertical index 70*9, height therefore lower than breadth, parieto- 

 occipital slope gradual ; forehead somewhat retreating, glabella and supraciliaries 

 well marked ; nasion a little depressed, nasal bones projecting with a good bridge ; 

 anterior nares narrow, leptorhine, 45*1 ; orbital border thick rounded, index low, 

 78'6, microseme, upper jaw orthognathous, 927.+ 



In 1898 the late General Traill Burroughs, C.B., of Trumland House, 

 Eousay, Orkney, in excavating a mound of loose stones and earth, circular at the 

 base arid about 30 feet in diameter, exposed a chambered cairn. From notes 

 and specimens which he sent me I drew up an account § of the cairn and the 

 objects exposed. 



The chamber consisted of a central compartment, off which four smaller chambers 

 opened. A human skeleton was seen in each of two of the chambers, and many 

 fragments of pottery were found in them which represented several vessels. There 

 was no sign of cremation in the chambers. The passage from the central com- 

 partment to the surface of the mound was 15 feet long (fig. 7) ; in its inner half 

 were seen human bones which represented three skeletons, as well as other fragments 

 of bones which had been cremated. The passage also contained bits of coarse 

 paste pottery, the largest of which seemed to be part of the foot of a cinerary urn, 

 as well as a hammer head of smooth grey granite and a flake of flint. 



* Mem. Anthrop. Soc. London, vol. iii, p. 243, 1870. 



+ Proc. Sol: Antiq. Scot., vol. ii, pp. 33, 62, plate iii, 1859. 



t Mr Cosmo Inxe.s described and figured iu P.S.A.S., vol. iii, 1862, as associated with stone circles, cairns at 

 Clara in Nairnshire which enclosed a large chamber with a long passage. One of the cairns was described by Sir 

 T. Dick Lauder (Moray Floods), also by Dr R. Munro in Prehistoric Scotland. 



i P.S.A.S., vol. xxxvii, p. 73, 1903. 



