THE CRANIOLOGY OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 247 



represented a later stage of the bronze age than did the beaker urns, both were 

 important ceremonial adjuncts in interments by inhumation. With the introduction 

 of cremation they and their symbolic significance disappeared. 



Whatever be the immediate starting-point of the invasion, a further question 

 naturally arises as to the European centre from which they had originally proceeded. 

 A considerable body of opinion favours the view that their parent race was the 

 brachy cephalic Mid-European group which is now represented by the people of the 

 valley of the Ehine, Switzerland, South Germany and the Tyrol. Their centre of 

 dispersion towards Britain was from the Alps of Mid Europe — hence the name Alpine 

 i-ace — northward into Scandinavia, westward to France and the Low Countries, 

 whence migration to Britain became possible. 



The Iron Age in Britain may be said to start from the Celtic invasion, and the 

 discoveries at Hallstatt have shown that on the Continent the metal had been wrought 

 into tools and weapons during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. In a previous 

 section (p. 217) I have stated that, through the practice of cremation by the Celts 

 and the paucity of distinctive interments, our knowledge of the physical characters 

 of these people and of their graves is very imperfect. Since that section was in 

 type I have had, through the courtesy of Mr A. 0. Curle, the opportunity of read- 

 ing the proof-sheets of his important memoir on excavations of an ancient inhabited 

 fortification situated on Traprain Law, Prestonkirk, East Lothian, to be published in 

 the forthcoming volume of the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 

 Though no remains of man himself were recognised, numerous relics were exposed of 

 pottery, native and Roman, weapons and implements of bronze and iron, harness 

 mountings, flint scrapers, whorls and discs of stone, moulds of stone and baked clay 

 for bronze castings, glass vessels and ornaments of jet and glass. The character 

 of these objects and a few coins found along with them of the days of Hadrian, 

 Antoninus Pius and Trajan, showed them to be of the iron age as found in 

 southern Scotland, and associated them with the Roman and Romano-British 

 occupation at the end of the first and at the beginning of the second century. 

 Interspersed with them were objects having the characteristic Celtic ornamenta- 

 tion, of the second century. Some of these resembled objects described by Mr 

 James Curle in his elaborate work on the Roman fort excavated at Newstead a 

 few years ago.* On the other hand, one or two specimens could be definitely 

 associated with the bronze age. 



The collection illustrates the overlapping which' occurs in the transition between 

 different periods, the persistency of custom, and the care that is required in the 

 interpretation of the age of objects disclosed in archaeological research. 



The presence in graves of articles belonging to different periods is not limited to 

 prehistoric interments. I may refer to "goods" (now in the University Museum) 

 from the grave of an aboriginal Australian, which, along with the back of a steel 



* A Roman Frontier Post and its People, 1910. 



