236 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



So far as Scotland is concerned, bronze must have been introduced from without, 

 as the ores of its metals do not occur in North Britain. The brachycephalic builders 

 of the short cists were, without doubt, the race which brought bronze into Scotland, 

 though, from the small proportion of their burials in which objects formed of bronze 

 have been found (p. 184), the more primitive materials employed by neolithic man 

 evidently remained for a long time in use during the bronze age. It is probable 

 that in England also bronze was introduced by the early brachycephalic invaders, 

 but, from the prevalence of the ores of these metals in many parts of South Britain, 

 they began at an earlier period to be utilised by its inhabitants from their own 

 natural resources, and the supply was not limited to imports from without. 



Bronze had undoubtedly been in use on the Continent before the brachycephalic 

 invasion of Britain, which Sir John Evans considered might have taken place be- 

 tween 1400 B.C. and at the latest 1200 B.C., though Mr Abercromby gave it an 

 earlier date, about 2000 B.C. The bronze age in England preceded that in Scotland ; 

 and whilst the interments corresponded in both countries in the bent position of 

 the body in the grave, in the brachycephalic proportions and form of the skull, and 

 in the general character of the grave goods, it showed not unfrequently differences 

 in the aspect of the grave itself. When inhumation was practised in Scotland the 

 body was placed in a characteristic short cist, which in some cases was enclosed 

 in a cairn of stones, often of great dimensions ; in others in a mound or tumulus 

 of sand or earth ; but generally it was placed a little below the surface of the 

 ground without any external mark of its position. In England, again, especially in 

 certain counties, the bodies had been buried in mounds, or Round or Short Barrows, 

 distinguished from the Long Barrows by their smaller dimensions and rounded form. 

 Thurnam* in classifying English burials in barrows during the neolithic and bronze 

 age periods employed the aphorism "long barrows, long skulls ; round barrows, round 

 or short skulls " ; the first axiom of which is undoubtedly applicable to the form of 

 the skull in the long barrow in England and in the chambered cairn in Scotland. In 

 the latter country short cists may be regarded as equivalent to round barrows, and 

 short skulls are as a rule found in them ; but in both countries skulls with dolicho- 

 cephalic proportions formed in some localities a proportion of the crania contained 

 in the round barrows and the short cists. 



In considering the proportion of the breadth to the length of skulls it should be 

 kept in mind that Anders Retzius, who introduced the terms dolichocephalic and 

 brachycephalic into the ethnographical description of crania, did not employ the 

 sharp numerical definition now in use, but relied on their general character as pre- 

 sented to the observer. Broca and the French school of anthropologists were more 

 specific, and used the term dolichocephalic to express crania in which the breadth 

 bore to the length a proportion of less than 75 to 100 ; whilst brachycephalic signified 

 skulls in which the breadth was in the proportion of 80 and upwards to 100. To the 



* '• Ancient British and Gaulic Skulls," Mem. Anthrop. Soc. London, vol. i, p. 158, 1865, 



