THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 231 



Esk G. Iii their arrangement in a cemetery they were in rows parallel to each other, 

 and the distance between the graves in each row and between the rows, was such as 

 to ensure economy in the use of ground, as in a modern cemetery. Except in such 

 modifications in size as were needed for the burial of an adult or a child, no material 

 difference in their appearance, as might indicate relative rank or wealth, was 

 observed. It should also be noted that whilst several have been exposed at and near 

 the seashore, others again have been found inland a number of miles from the coast, 

 which disposes of suggestions at one time made, that they were interments of ship- 

 wrecked sailors. Their orderly arrangement in cemeteries and the special graves for 

 children showed that they did not mark an ancient battlefield, but were the burial- 

 places of the people of towns and villages in the district, and had apparently been 

 in use for generations. Their uniformity and simplicity of design, the extended 

 body and the absence of grave goods and cremation indicated a community of thought 

 amongst the builders, which gave to them a character of their own, distinct from 

 the megalithic graves of the stone age and the short cists and cinerary urns of the 

 bronze-using people. The question therefore naturally arises, were they constructed 

 by a race distinct from and later in time than the people of the stone and bronze 

 ages and the pagan Celts 1* In regard to this question a careful perusal of the 

 recorded examples shows that fragments of rusted iron have been found in a few 

 graves. In one of the long graves at Cramond an iron key was found near the 

 skeleton, and was figured in the Archwologica Scotica. One of the skulls from 

 Lundin had a piece of corroded iron lying across the bridge of the nose ; in another, 

 from Largo, the skull had been fractured and a piece of rusted iron was in the 

 fracture ; in a cist at Hallow Hill, St Andrews, a fragment of corroded iron had been 

 found on the skull. These examples show that the burials had been made after the 

 use of iron had become general. Other characters which they exhibited dissociated 

 them, however, from interments during the pagan iron age of the archaeologist, and 

 the question arises whether the presence of this metal were not due rather to its 

 accidental intrusion in individual examples, than as a customary appanage to an 

 interment of the period. 



Graves of this type, however, have a feature which has always been regarded 

 as distinctive, viz. the orientation of the grave and the body, the head of which was 

 at the west with the face looking to the east. This mode of burial is associated 

 with the introduction of Christianity and with its adoption, while the absence of 

 grave goods and cremation indicate different conceptions of a future state as between 

 the pagan builders of neolithic and bronze-age tombs on the one hand and the 

 Christian people who apparently constructed the long stone cists on the other. 



I have made measurements, frequently imperfect, of twenty skulls obtained 

 from long cists (Table VIII). The crania varied in length from 168 to 190 mm., 

 with the mean 182 mm. The breadth varied from 129 to 147 mm., with the mean 



* This question is discussed more fully on p. 251. 



