250 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



# 

 dolichocephalic, orthognathic, with a long narrow face and nose ; 42 per cent, in the 



collection were dolichocephalic, 52 mesocephalic, only 6 per cent, brachycephalic. 

 Virchow found five iron-age skulls from Denmark to be dolichocephalic. The skulls 

 from burials in Scotland recognised as Norse are as yet too few in number to enable 

 a general statement to be made, but the presumption is in favour of the type being 

 dolicho- or mesodolichocephalic,* like their ancestors in Scandinavia of the iron age. 



At the close of the Roman occupation of Britain in the fifth century the island 

 was invaded by tribes from the opposite shores of the North Sea, which we know 

 now as Jutland, Schleswig-Holstein, the Elbe area, Frisian coast and islands, and 

 the Netherlands. The tribes named separately Angles (Engles), Saxons, and Jutes, 

 collectively formed the Anglo-Saxons. Plunder was at first their object, but in 

 course of time the south, the east and the middle of England were conquered by the 

 Jutes and Saxons, the British people were driven into Wales, Devon, and Cornwall, 

 those who remained in the conquered districts were to some extent enslaved, 

 Christianity disappeared, was superseded by pagan rites, and small separate Anglo- 

 Saxon kingdoms were established. The north country from the Humber to the Forth 

 was conquered by the Angles, who divided it into Deira, extending from the Humber 

 to the Tees, and Bernicia, from the Tees to the estuary of the Forth (the Frisian 

 Sea). In the seventh century Edwin, king of Deira, annexed Bernicia, became king of 

 Northumbria which included the south-east border Lowlands and the Lothians, and 

 settlements were also formed by the Angles and Jutes along the east coast further to 

 the north.f Including the Lothians, the Lowlands were the parts of Scotland which 

 were colonised directly by the Angles. During the pagan period the Anglo-Saxons 

 practised cremation. No satisfactory evidence has been obtained in Scotland of 

 Anglo-Saxon burials of this period, or of their cremation urns, and I know of no 

 crania collected in Scotland which can be regarded as those of pagan Anglo-Saxons. 



In England, on the other hand, Anglo-Saxon burials have been investigated by 

 several archaeologists. Rolleston has described I Anglo-Saxon cremation-urn inter- 

 ments at Frilford, Berkshire, and elsewhere, before they were superseded by the 

 Christian practice of inhumation after the arrival of Augustine at the court of 

 Ethelbert, the Kentish king, at the end of the sixth century. Rolleston emphasised 

 the practice of cremation by saying that every fresh discovery of distinctively Anglo- 

 JSaxon urns shows how thoroughly England was overrun by the " heathen of the 

 Northern sea," in the period which elapsed between the landing of Hengist in 

 Thanet and the Christianising of the invaders by Augustine and his successors. He 



* Baknard Davis gave measurements of an ancient Norse skull found in 1840 near Lough Larne, Antrim, the 

 cephalic index of which was 73 ; also another marked "ancient Danish?" from East Riding, Yorkshire, the index 

 nl' which was 74. See Thesaurus Craniorum and Supplement. 



t Hodgkin, The History of England from Earliest Times to Norman Conquest, London, 1906, chapters vi, viii, xi. 

 W. F. Skene considered ("Early Frisian Settlements in Scotland," P.S.A.S., iv, 169,1863) evidence to exist of 

 Frisian settlements as early as 374 a.d., i.e. prior to the Saxon invasion of England, along the north shore of the 

 Firth of Forth, the south-east shore, and the shore of Forfar and Kincardine. 



j Archasologia, 1870 and 1879 ; also Collected Scientific Papers, vol. ii, edited by W. Turner, Oxford, 1884. 



