182 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



seme, 95*1 ; the others were wide in relation to the height, microseme, and the mean 

 was 78 "9. The palato-maxillary index was either mesuranic or brachyuranic, the 

 mean of four specimens was 1 17*7. 



The characters of the neolithic skulls may be summarised as follows : crania 

 elongated, the occiput not flattened but protruding, the vertex not high ; the face 

 long ; the upper jaw almost vertical, orthognathous ; the nose relatively narrow, 

 nostrils not wide ; the orbits with the breadth wide in relation to the height ; the 

 palate short and relatively wide ; the capacity of the cranium approximated to that 

 of modern Europeans. 



The interments above described as neolithic were limited to particular localities 

 in Scotland, as the chambered long cairns in Argyll, Arran, Bute, Galloway and 

 Nairn, the horned and chambered cairns in Caithness, Sutherland and the Orkneys, 

 and the tumulus at Newbattle. There can be no doubt that a dolichocephalic race 

 lived in neolithic times. The preservation of their remains throughout the centuries 

 was due to the substantial modes of interment, which justify the inference that the 

 builders practised well-designed constructional methods during at least the later 

 stage of the neolithic period. The labour obviously required for their construction 

 points to the tombs being those of the chiefs of the tribes with their families. It 

 should not be inferred that this race, like these cairns, was limited to small areas in 

 Scotland, and it is probable that the burials of the people generally were frailer in 

 construction and had consequently disappeared. Instruments and weapons made 

 of polished stone and worked flints characteristic of the neolithic period have been 

 found in numerous localities but not associated with interments, though some of 

 these doubtless had been in use in the succeeding bronze age. 



Bronze Age — Short Cists ; Cremation Urns. 



In Scotland two modes of burial were practised in the bronze period, Inhumation 

 and Cremation. Inhumed dead bodies were interred in characteristic stone graves, 

 known as short cists, which were concealed in cairns or tumuli, or were placed only 

 a few feet below the surface of the ground. These graves were less massive in 

 construction than the chambered cairns of the neolithic age. 



Archaeology. 



In general character a short cist was built of a single, or at times of two flat 

 slabs of undressed stone on each side and of a smaller slab at each end ; the stones 

 rested on their lower edge, and supported on the upper edge a more massive slab as 

 a cover for' the cist, with occasionally a second smaller slab superimposed. The floor 

 of the cist might be the natural rock, or clay, or gravel, seldom a layer of flat stones. 

 In internal dimensions the cist averaged 3 to about 4 feet in length, about 2 feet in 

 breadth and the same in height. The covering slab was longer and overlapped the 



