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; ,

ILLUSTRATIONS

01' THE

SIGNIFICANCE OF CERTAIN ANCIENT
BRITISH SKTJLL FORMS.

■>

' \ !' t

From

the Canadian Journal /or March, 1863.

ILLT7STRATION3 OP THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OEETAIN
ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

BY DANXEZ. WltSON, tt.D..
PBOFBSBOE 0» HISTOBT ABD aHGXiSH HTJBAIUKB tT,T,,,»c

« «-»y«HATU»B, ClUVBBSIXT COUBGB, TOHOHTO.

During a recent visit to 'Wnqlii'ncyf«« t m j
facilities afforded me by vZlorZt°'l ^''^^^^'^'f "^ 'he
the Smithsonian Institution/to eL^l^iih" ''T'^ '""*'"^ °^
liological collections p-eserved ther? inti i T"'" ""'^ *''° «">-
United States ExplorinTEldMon „ I! ^"^ '^T ^"""'^ ^^ ""
eating collection 'of huCctS„°' The Z?"^ ^ ? ^^""^ "'"^'•
Esquimaux and Tchulitchi TT\ . '"''''"^^' *'"'«« "f

disLed Chinook and ot; FlathL Thul /^''T"' ""^ ^^"^
those of other Indian tribp« h^r % at ', ^" "' examples of

and of Piji, Kanatrand"'o:L' P ClfsU e^:" 'o"'" ^T™="
opent a short time in Philadelphia chMvt. tt ""y/e'"™ I

.tudy of the valuable mater airof the M„rf-''"''°.f°'^'''""''^^
whUe there enjoyed the l^l^n^t II ■ ''°^^^''^''"' ' «■"*

with Dr. J. AitkenMeigs!a series on25^ "^' '" """f^^

by Br. Hayes during I Arcrrurn^ ffirr """^ ""'"'"^^

invite to very diverse re,.„.„l,! t VT *''^"' ''"P'^'mmts ; and

toafford. ItchaTeedTo?ete '^^ /'^^"^

recalled to an oU snbi Jt J' ,'»>'.»"''"*'»" tad been recently

modification o^hefrmr„flrr«v I '''''"™ '" '''' P--"'"

very causes which softer llTterthot'ffZ''^'-'' ""° "' «■"

a.ection to some r^t^t:^^:;;^:'' "'" «'™

ILLUSTRATIONS OP THE SIGNIFICANCE O,

skull. But though on a ZZflit I tT" '"""• ^'""^

crania au object of special ITv tl ' ' ''' ""^ «■■'-■'«■'* ""^-""J

the series wa'e u„t tllltoMel-^'T """ff » «''™i''' •'

the original ior tl,e fir,t tim" tZ "0™^^/.,""'' ^ '"'" ''"""■''^'»

to satisfy me that the remarkahl. f! ] * " '"""""tion «a>

"e much more due rartml ilfl ""^ K""""'""' "^ «"" •''"11

.uppose from the views Xhtl in ThTv t" '•'"" *■"" '«* •»

to Knowledge* The vert ^1 •^f"**»«'M Contribution,

In the original it pres nis «! "T* ''f"^'^' » ^^'^ """""te.

before desfgnatedrthe t:crdw!T™'T'^'''''"-
broad Battened occiput to its eztreLTn ??,'? "'""P"' fr"™ •
tapering with slightlateral swell ?»^ >°^ ''™^"'' •■"* *>=»
immediately behind the^xtonr-n,'''''""'''' '" '^'«' '"^'"'th
The occiput has been subTecrdtol;?r""' ''''■«'■'»'»' ''»<'•
greater extent than is apparent f^m th/f ""^ ^""^^ '» » '»»"''
time it is accompanied by no 2117 ! T"^" ' ''""" the same
.uch as inevitably r^snl frl T '"^°^'''''°""'*'''''"™''*«'''°»«.
other Flathead tribes !m!r . T'''""' "^ ">« ^hinooks ani
« effected by hircSrth'VT''/™™"' '''^'•°™*°
modifying the frontaUs much °f , "'"'"' ""■* "o^e^uently
On this account, eZTJi^t *' ""' P"™'"' ""^ occipital bones
able skull, it is pr'oba rdu so^T* t '""^""^ '» *^'^ -""''k-
the cradle-board acting on" h"!^,'" "■," ""'^'''ig-ed pressure of
portions and great nafura? n ^ 1 '""''''""■^ brachycephalie pro-
arched, the guct pS:t ;z^^^^^ .^'■'' '■"-■'-^ - '•""r

bone is essentially d-W from rt T v "^"'""''' "^ "■« fr™*"'
very much ossified rand even t! T '^P'" '^'^ ™'"^» ««

as 18.«. when discos stg DrMoWsf "f"'^"'^"- '° ^"'^
tjpe pervading the whok ancienr, / . ^ °^'""' ""'fo™ mnial
South America, with tie sZL "'?'''™ '"''^^ '"'North and
remarked: I thnk it ex L f ^ T^F^'"'^ "^ *•=" ^-'quimaux, I
«m tend to the conettn th'f'f"'"' "'"' ''""'" '"vestigaton
instead of being Tt, pi al c ar! J • !• '"'"'' "' ^''"™^'' »«'?»'.
olasa of artificial modfflSn,f!u"""' P^''"'"^ '""■•o'y *» the
American ethnoWis a^ke " VVT'^ "™"'"» '■'"''*«^ *" the
^^1^^^ of ^idelyXfcd lliTrr;"'"' ''''''" ""

p. zi, Canadian Journal, yoL ij. p. 40fl.

nd
nd
of

ed
aa
ill

>»
I
»

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS. $

This idea received further confirmation from noticing the almost
invariable accompaniment of such traces of artifioinl m. ifi T-
with more or le«s inequality in the t.o side' of tt heTd^^'r^^^
extremely transtormed skulls of .he Flathead Indians and of tl
Natche., Peruv:ans, and other ancient nations b/7hom the am!
barbarous practice was encouraffed. thft extpn* nfV- T/ • ®

8kuU.fbrms,wa3au.llTf„r ' ""'''''""»> *» """^n' British

pointing o,.; z sr iX:s rrMirzt '"• r^-

Vmmetrical conformation, or irreeularL of fn ' ?''*^"

S:=:"-; jrc^f S^^^^^^^^^^

tended, in iL^l^-^C uLT:^'' '''.'''^'''' » infancy, having

longitudinal arjelJu^eonstHuraoT* I'r"''""'' ''' ''"'
characteristics. eonst.tutea one ot the.r most remarkable

of the British Association in 1 «7 .f '"' ^"'''"» "^^t'ng

B.ada before leavi g Scotlnd in 1857 O ^^»"''. "^ ""-mtioxS

*«»«..> Anna!, u/ .Scotla^^ U IfL to ".' d"°° "• ''^ ''"■
ethnological significance «( ,hJ " . ^ *" » discussion as to the

.dding to the Ij^tZTmutZl cmTT" : "P""^'""''^ f"
ment. In pursuing suIJ ? ^"' interesting depart-

eknlls, andtoZfrZu'r truZTr "' °™'™' ^'-h/cephali^
mound skull of the sl t vX t ™'/"°°™P™'''^- "« ■" '^e
occiput which I soon b ™n , ''"'^' Y "" "'"•"P' fl='tt^°i"g of the
Sincethenlheiac HtL Z to suspect «as due to artificial causes.

collections I,avrWarr»r"7'f^"r"''"™^^

of form of whll th" ZmTn h :, ""' ""'^ "'"' ">" «^"-'">'' varieties

a 2

4 ILLUSTRATIONS OV THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

pressure of the Indian cradle-board. The examination uud meaeure-
ment of several hundred specimens of American cranio, as well as of
the living head in representatives of various Indian tribes, have
also satisfied me uot only of the existence of dolichocephulio and
brachycephalic heads as tribal or national characteristica» but of the
common occurrence of the same exaggerated brachycephalic form,
accompanied with the vertical or obliquely flattened occiput, which
bad seemed to be characteristic of the crania cf tfie Scottish tumuli.
There are indeed ethnical differences apparent, as in the frontal and
malar bones, but so far as the posterior region of the head it
ccncerned, both appear to exhibit the same undesigned deformation
resulting from the process of nursing etiil practised among many
Indian tribes.

The light thus thrown on the habits of the British mother of pre-
historic times, by the flkull-form* found in ancient barrows, is replete
with interest, from the suggestions it furnishea of ancient customs
hifherf> undreamt of. But it has also another and higher Talue to
the craniologist, from its thus showing that some, at least, of the pecu-
liar forms hitherto accepted as ethnical distinctions, may le more cor-
rectly traced ta causes operating after birth.

The first example of this pecuUar cranial conformation which at-
tracted my attention, as possibly traceable to other causes than inherj-
ted characteristics, or natural deviations from the typical skull-form
of an extinct race, occurred on the opening of a stone cist at Juniper
Green, near Edinburgh, on the I7thofMay. 1851. Soon after the
publication of tiie Prehistoric Annah of Scotland, in which the epecial
characteristics of the crania of the Scottish tumuli were first discussed,
I learned of the accidental discovery of an ancient tomb in a garden
on the Lanark road, a few miles to the north-west of Edinburgh, and
immediately proceeded to the spot. The cist occupied a slightly ele-
vated site, distant only a few yards from the road ; and as this had
long been under cultivation as a garden, if any mound originally mark-
ed the spot it had disappeared, and no external indication distinguish-
ed it as a place of sepulture. A shallow cist formed of unhewn slabs
of sandstone enclosed a space measuring three feet eleven inches in
length, by two feet one inch in breadth at the head, and one foot eleven
inches at foot. The joints fitted to each other with sufficient regular-
ity to admit of their being closed by a few stone chips inserted at the
junction, after which they appeared to have been carefully cemented
with wet loam or clay. The slab which covered the whole projected

nortioQ
n was
eavy ;

have

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS. f

• over the sides, ho ns effectually to protect the sepulchral chamher from
any infiltration of eartH. It lay in a sandy soil, within little more than
two feet of the surface j but it had probahly been covered until a com-
paratively recent period by a greater depth of earth, as ita iite was
higher than the eurrounding surface, and possibly thus marked
the traces of the nearly levelled tumulus. Slight ns this elevation
was it had proved sufficient to prevent the lodgment of water, and
hence the ciat was found perfectly free from damp. Within this a
male skeleton lay on its left side. The arms appeared to have been
folded over the breast, and the Vnees drawn up so aa to touch the
elbows. The head had been suj)ported by a flat water-worn stone for
its pillow i but from this it had fallen to the bottom of the cist, on its
being detached by the decomposition of the fleshly *' rer and, as
is common in crania discovered under similar ci; s, it had

completely decayed a\' the part in contact with the -
of tiie left side is thus wanting ; but with this exc(
not only nearly perfect when found, but the bones are .
and the whole skeleton appeared to ine so well preservt u
admitted of articulation. Above the right jboulder, « neat ear ihen
vase had been placed, probably with food or drink. It contained only
a little sand aud black dust when recovered, uninjured, from the spot
where it had been deposited by afl'ectionate hands many centuries
before, and is now preserved along with the ekuU in the Scottish
Museum of Antiquities.

As the peculiar forms of certain skulls, such as one described by
Dr. Thurnam, from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Stone, in Bucking-
hamshire, • and another from an Indian cemetery at Montreal in
Lower Canada, f as well as those of numerous distorted crania, from
the Roman site of Uriconiura and other ancient cemeteries, have been
ascribed to posthumous compression: the precise circumstances atten-
dant on the discovery of the Juniper Green cist are important, from
the proof they aiford that the body orij^inally deposited witnin it, had
lain there undisturbed and entirely jnafFected by any superincumbent
pressure from the day of its interment. Two, if not three, classes of
skulls have been recovered from early British graves. One with a
predominant longitudinal diameter, in the most marked examples
difi^ers so essentially in its elongated and narrow forehead, and occi-
put from the modern dolichocephalic head, that I was led to assign it to

• Crania Britannica, Dec. I. p. 38,

t Ediu. Philo8oph. Journal, N. S. XVI. p. 269.

O ILLUSTRATIONS OJ THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

« separate class under the title lcutnl)ecep!ialic.* Another has the Ion-
gitudinnl diameter little in excess of the greatest parietal breadth, and
is no less strikingly distinguished from the prevailing modem bead,,
whether of Celtic or Saxon ureas, bjr its shortness, than thr nchor is
by its length, when viewed cither in profile or vertically. Thk» Anglo-
^ Saxon type of skull appears to be intermediate between those two
formr. with a more symmetrical oval, fluch ti if of common occurrence
in modern English skulls.

If cranial conformation has any ethnical eignificance, it appear* to
me niconceivable that the two extreme forms above referr»:d to caa
both pertain to the same face; and the circumstances under which the
most characteristic examples of the opposite tv, es have been found,
confirm me in the belief which I advocated when the evidence was
much less conclusive, that the older doHchocephaiic or kurabecephalic
skull illu?trates the physical characteristics of a race tvhich preceded
the advent of the Celtee in Britain, and gradually disappeared before
their aggressions. Ao, however, the opposite opinion is maintained by
so high an authority as Dr. J. Barnard Davis, tho comparison of the
tollowmg measurements, illustrative of the three tvpes of head will
best exhibit the amount of deviation in opposite directions from the
intermediaU; form. The mensurements arc taken from those furnish,
ed in the Crania Britannka, and include the longitudinal diameter,
frontal, parietal, and oceij)ital breadth, parietal height, and horizon^
tal circumferenee. No. 1, like the majority of the same class, is de-
rived from a megalithic chambered barrow, and has been selected by
Dr. Davis as a characteristic example of the class to which it belongs 4
though, according to him, that is on* of aberrant deviation from the
typical British form. No. 2. obtained from a barrcM. at Codford m
Wiltshire, has also been selected by i)r. D. /is as one of three typical
British crania. It is of the same type as the Juniper Green skull, v.^^
Its strongly marked characteristics are thus defii^ed by him: "Itfl
most interesting peculiarities are its small size, and its decidedly
brachychepahc conformation. This latte* character, which commonly
appertains to the ancient British cranium, and even to that form which
we regard as typical, is seldom met with expressed in so marked a
manner. J No. 3. is a skull from an Anglo-Saxon cemetery neaf
Litlmgton, Sussex, one of two of tvhich Dr. Davis reuiarks : "There is .
" - ^ ■ — • — - • -■- — -.. — -■-

• Prehistoric AnmU of t^cotland, p 177

t Proceedings of the Acad. Nat. Sciences. PhUadelphia, 1857. p. 49.

i Crania Jirttamca, Dec. a., pi li. * . r »-

CXRTAtIf ANCIKNT BRITISH SKUIX FOIXMS.

••general indication of good .form in tlioae fine cnjjnclous skulls, which
i# apparent In every aspect. . . On a review of die whole series
of AngIo*Shxon crania which haTC comy midei- ui i* notice, we are led
t9 conclude that this plea^.ng oval, nithe? dolichociplmlic form, may
beat be dest^rving the epithet of typical among them."^ All the three
examples ire male skuUs:

1. Fir/ Chambered Barrow Skull

a. Co'lford Skull

3. Litlington Skull.. **•..

b. r.

8.1
6.8
T.5

V. a

r. k.

4.»

6.»

4.6

5,T

4.7

5.3

0.il.

5.
5.1

4.6

r. K.

S.I
4.7

4.9

«.

21.
20.
20.9

Each of the above examples presents the features of the type to
^hicfe it belongs with more than usual prominence, so that if the
mea» of a large eeriea were taken, the elements of difference between
the three would be less strongly defined. The diilerercea are, how-
ever, those on which their separate classification depeaas } and they
thus illustrate the special points on which anycrauiOi^sjic^i corrrarison
for ethnological purposes must be based. Of the ttiree ska.is, the
era and race of one of them (No. 3) are well determined. It is that
of ft Sason, probably of the seventh or eighth century, of the race of
the South Sa :on3, descended i'tom JE\h and his followers ; and recovered
in a district where the permanenry of the same ethnic type is illus-
truted by its predominance among the rural population at the present
day. Another of the selected examples. No. 2, is assumed by Dr.
Davis, perhaps on satisfactory grounds, to be an ancient British, i.e.,
Celtic Skull. It is indeed a difficulty, which has siill to be satisfac-
torily explained, how it is that if this brachycephalic type be the true
British head-form, no such prevalence of it rn modern Celtic areas
•is to be found, as in the case of Saxon Sussex connects the race of its
ancient pagan and christian cemeteries, by means of the characteristic
ovoid skull, with the Anglo-Saxon population of the present day.
The historical race and era with which Dr. Davis appears to connect
the Barrow-builders of Wiltshire, is thus indicated in the Crania
Britanruca.—-**Uegion of the Belgee, Temp. Ptolemsei, A.D. 120."
The Belgse of that era— then apparently comparatively recent in-
truders, and by some regarded as not Celtic but Germanic— were dis-
placed, if not exterminated; but the modern Britons of Wales are

• Crania Sritanieat Dec ir, pla. 3», 40.

ILLUSTRATIOIm.:^ OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

undoubted descendants of British Celts of Ptolemy's age. Though
doubtless mingling Saxon and Norman with pure British blood, they
probably preserve the native type as little modified by such foreign
adm xture as that of its supplanters in the most thoroughly Saxon
or Anglish districts of England. It is therefore a question of some
importance how far the extreme brachycephalic proportions of the
so-called British type may be traceable to other than inherited ethnical
characteristics ; whether in fact it is not entirely due to the unde-
signed flattening of the occiput, and lateral expansion of the brain
and skull, consequent on the use of the cradle-board.
^ Meanwhile, turning from this supposed British skull of Roman
times, to the one derived from Uley chambered barrow, No. 1, the
most ancient of the series, and assuming their chronological order to
be undisputed, as it appears to be : we find no gradation from an ab-
breviated to an elongated form, but, on the contrary, an extreme bra-
chycephalic type interposed between the ovoid dolichocephalic Anglo-
Saxon of the Christian era, and the extreme dolichocephalic, or kumbe-
cephalic one belonging to a period seemingly so remote that Dr.
Thurnam, when noting the recurrence of the same type in another
chambered barrow at LittLton Drew. Wiltshire, remarked : '■ It is not
necessary to admit the existence of any pre-Celtic race, as the skulls
described may be those of Gaelic, as distinguished from Cymric,
Celts; or the long-headed builders of these long, chambered, stone
barrows, may have been an intrusive people, who entered Britain from
the South-west. Can they have been some ancient Iberian or Ibero-
Phcenician settlers ?"*

Among the rarer crania of the Morton collection is one to which a
peculiar interest attaches, and which may possibly have some signifi-
cance in reference to this inquiry. Its history is thus narrated in Dr.
Henry S. Paterson's Memoir of Dr. Morton : During a visit of Mr.
Gliddon to Paris, in 1846, he presented a copy of the Crania ^gyp.
tiaca to the celebrated oriental scholar, M. Fresnel, and exited his in-
terest in the labours of its author. Upv.ards of a year after he re ^eiv-
ed at Philadelphia, a box containing a skull, forwarded from Naples,
but without any information relative to it. " It was handed over to
Morton," says Dr. Paterson, "who at once perceived its dissimilarity
to any in his possession. It was evidently very old, the animal matter
having almost e ntirely disappeared. Day after day would Morton

♦ Crania Britannica, Doe. iil. pi. ai, (4.) "*

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

be found absorbed in its contemplation. At last he announced his
conclusion. He had never seen a Phcenician skull, and he had no
idea where this one came from ; but it was what he conceived a Phoe-
nician skull should be, and it could be no other." • Six months after-
wards Mr. Gliddon received, along with other letters and papers for-
warded to him from Naples, a slip of paper, in the handwriting of M.
Fresnel, containing the history of the skull, which had been discovered
by him during his exploration of an ancient tomb at Malta. Dr.
Meigs refers to this in his catalogue of the collection, (No. 1352,) as an
illustration of *♦ the wonderful power of discrimination, the tactus
visus, acquired by Dr. Morton in his long and critical study of cranio-
logy." Such was my own impression on first reading it ; but I confess
the longer I reflect on it, the more am I puzzled to guess by what
classical or other data, or process short of absolute intuition, the ideal
type of the Phoenician head could be determined. I suspect, there-
fore, if we had the statement in Dr. Morton's ovm words, it would fall
short of such an absolute craniological induction. The following is
the sole entry made by him in his catalogue : " Ancient Phcenician ?
I received this highly interesting relic from M. F. Fresnel, the distin-
guished French archseologist and traveller, with the following memo-
randum, A. D. 1847 :— Crane provenant des caves sepulchrales de
Ben-Djemma, dans Tile de Malte. Ce crane parait avoir appartenu k
un individu de la race qui, dans les temps les plus anciens, occupait la
eote septentrionale de V Afrique, el les iles adjaoentes." The sepul-
chral caves of Ben-Djemma, are s series of galleries with lateral
chambers or catacombs hewn in the face of the cliffs on the south-
west side of the island of Malta. Other traces besides the rock-
hewn tombs indicate the existence of an ancient town there, although
no record of its name or history survives. M. Frederick Lacroix
remarks, la his Malfe et U Ooze, ** Whoever the inhabitants of this
city may have been, it is manifest from what remains of their works,
that they were not strangers to the processes of art. The sepulchral
caves, amounting to a hundred in number, receive light by means of
little apertures, some of which are decorated like a finished doorway.
In others, time and the action of the humid atmosphere, have obli-
terated all traces of such ornament, and left only the weathered rock.
The chambers set apart for sepulture are excavated at
a considerable distance from the entrance, in the inmost recesses of

' Memoir of S. G. Morton; Types of Mankind, p. x\.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

Ilii

the subterranean galleries. The tombs are of admirable design and
style of art and the details of their execution exhibit remarkable
ingenuity and punty of t.ste The author of the Voyage pittores^ue
de S^cde does not hesitate to declare that they surpass in elegance any
that ne has seen executed on the same scale. What hand has hewn
out these gloomy recesses in the rock ? To that we can give no reply.
The chromcles of Malta are silent on this point. Time has defaced

problem ''* ''^^'''^''' ^"'' ^'^^'^ *° *^' '^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^

JT. '"^'r ''"''^^1' r '^"' "^ ^"*^^"^^y «^°""^ i» Malta

Tvtl V7 r^^^'T'^ 5/"°'^' ^"^^"'"'S the Cyclopean ruins
*t> led La tourdes Qeants, which have also been assigned by some

writers to a PhcBnician or Punic origin, as a temple dedicated to
ABtarte ; and the Tadarnadur Isrira, a magalithic structure for which
a Pelasgic origin is assumed. But in drawing any comparison between
the chambered galleries of Bcn-Djemma and the megalithic cham-
bered barrows or cairns of the British Islands, we are at best reason-
mg from the little known to the less known indices of prehistoric
races ; between whom the points in common may amount to no more
than those which admit of a comparison being drawn between the
Brachycephah of the British Stone-Period, and the corresponding
physical form and rude arts of American gravemounds.

Nevertheless the Ben^Djemma skull in the Mortonian collection it
not improbably what it has been assumed it to be j and it is in many
respectr a remarkable one. A deep indentation at the nasal suture
gives the idea of an overhanging forehead, but the superciliary ridgce
are not prominent, and the peculiar character of the frontal ' bone U
most strikmgly apparent in the vertical view, where it is seen to retreat
on either side, almost in a straight line from the centre of the glabella
to the external angular processes of the frontal bone. The contour of
the coronal region is described by Dr. Meigs as « a long oval, which
recalls to mmd the kumbecephalic form of Wilson.*'t It it ia of
more importance, perhaps, to note that the remarkable skull re-
covered by Dr. Schmerling. from the Engis Cavern, on the left bank
of the Meuse, buried five feet in a breccia, along with the tooth of •
rhinoceros and other fossil bon.s. appears to be of the same elongatfd
dolichocephalic type. Its frontal devel opment ia long and narrow |

• Malte et le Gme, p. 21.
tCitol»su6ofHumMCrM,l.ta(heic«l.m,rfN.t.Scl.o«..fPkita«.I|4lfc p. a,

III

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS. H

and its greatest relative proportions, in length and breadth, are 7*7
by 5*25 inches, so that it closely corresponds in those respects to
the most characteristic British kumbecephalic crania.*

Whatever be the final conclusion of ethnologists, as to the evidence
which led me to adopt that name to indicate the characteristics of
a preceltic British race ; the necessity appears to be acknowledged for
some such term to distinguish this form from the ordinary dolichoce-
phalic type. The Ben-Djemma skull is narrow throughout, with its great,
est breadth a little behind the coronal suture, from whence it narrows
gradually towards front and rear. The lower jaw is large and massive,
but with less of the prognathous development than in the superior
maxillary. The skull is, no doubt, that of a man, and the nose has
been prominent ; but the zygomatic arches are delicate, and the whole
face is long, narrow, and tapering towards the chin. The parietals
meet at an angle, with n bulging of the sagittal suture, and a slight
but distinctly defined pyramidal form running into the frontal bone.
The occiput is full, round, and projecting a little more on the left side
than the right. The measurements are as follows : ~

Longitudinal iliameter ,, 7,4

Parietal diameter..... , s.j

Frontal diameter , 4,

Vertical diameter , 5.3

Intcrmcatoid arch = , 12.3

Intermastoid arch , 15. (7)

Intermastoid line » 4*3 (?)

Occipito-froQtal arch 14.3

Horizontal circumference 20.2

I hive been thus particular in describing this interesting skull,
because it furnishes some points of comparison with British kum*
becephalic crania, bearing on the inquiry, whether we may not
thus recover traces of the Phoeuician explorers of the Cassiteridei
in the long-headed builders of the chambered barrows. When
contrasting the wide and nearly virgin area with which Dr. Morton
had to deal, with that embraced in the scheme of the Crania BriU
mnica, I remarked in 1857 :— Compared with such a wide field of
investigation, the little island home of the Saxons may well seem
narrow ground for exploration. But to the ethnologist it is not «o.
There, amid the rudest traces of primeval arts, ho seeks, and
probably not in vain, for the remains of primitive El ^opean allophy*

• Natural History Meview, vol. L

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

lice. There it is not improbable that both Phoenicians and early
Greek navigators have left behind them evidences of their presence,
such as he alone can discriminate.*

Before, however, we can abandon ourselves to the temptations of
so seductive a theory,— which, after all, finds only such support
as may be deduced trom a certain general analogy of cranial
form ; and derives no confirmation from the works of art accoiu-
panying the remains of the long-headed barrow builders ;— it has ta
be borne in remembrance that the question ie still disputed with
reference to this class of British dolichocepliflie crania: are they
examples of an essentially distinct type, preserving evidence of the
cbaracteristics ot a difierent race, or are they mere exceptional
aberrant deviations from the supposed brachycephalic Celtic, or
British type ? Much stress is laid on the fact that the two forms of
skull have occasionally been recovered from the same barrow ; from
which it may be inferred that the two races to which I con^
ceive them to have belonged, were for a ntore or less limited
period contemporaneous. More than this t cannofc regard as a
legitimate induction from such premiaes, ia relation to trania of
such extremely diverse types. But this amounts to little; for
the same is undoubtedly true of thy ancient British and the modern
Anglo Saxon race ; and the discovery of Celtic and Saxon skulls in a
common barrow or tumulus of the 6th century is no proof that th©
latter race was not preceded by n.any centuries in the occupation of
the country, by the Britons, among "-'loui they then mingled as
conquerors and supplanters.

But the elongated ekulla of the Uley barrow typo are no rare
and exceptional forms. They have been most frequently found in
tombs of a peculiar character, and of great antiquity Many have
been recovered ta too imperfect a state to admit of more being
deduced from the fragments than that these conform to the more
perfect examples of this peculiar form. Nevertheless the number
already obtained in a sujfficiently perfect state to admit of detailed
measurement is remarkable, when their great age, and the circum-
stances of their recovery are fully considered. Of this the following
enumeration will afford satisfactory proof. Only two perfect crania
from the chambered tumulus of Uley, in Gloucestershire, — of which
the proportions of one are cited above,— have been preserved. But
in the later search of Mr. Freeman, and Dr. Thurnam. in 1854, the
fragments of eight or nine other skulls were recovered, and of these

* OaiKidian Joitmat, vol. it. p. 419.

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

the latter remarks : " The fragments are interesting, as proving that
the characters observed in the more perfect crania were common to
the individuals interred iu this tumulus. Three or four calvaria are
sufficiently complete to show that in them likewise the length of the
skulls had been great in proportion to the breadth."* Again in
the megalithic tumulus of Littleton Drew, North Wilts, at least
twenty-six skeletons appear to have been found, from several of
which imperfect crania were recovered, and of those Dr. Thurnam
remarks; " Eight or nine crania were sufficiently perfect for compar-
ison. With one exception, in which a lengthened oval form is not
marked, they are of the dolichocephalic class."t So also the four
nearly perfect skulls from West Kennet are described as "more or
less of the lengthened oval form, with the occiput expanded and
projecting, and presenting a strong contrast to skulls from the circular
barrows of Wilts and Dorset."^ To these may be added those of
Stoney Littleton, Somersetshire, first pointed out by Sir R. 0.
Hoare ; || and examples from barrows in Derby, Stafi'ord, and York-
shire, described by Mr. Thomas Bateman in his " Ten Years' Dig-
gings in Celtic and Saxon Grave Hills;" including those from
Bolehill, Longlow, and Ringham Low, Derbyshire ; from the galleries
of the tumulus on Five Wells Hill ; and from the Yorkshire barrow
near Heslerton-on-the- Wolds. Several of the above contained a
number of skulls ; and of the last, in which fifteen human skeletons
lay heaped together, Mr, Bateman remarks : *' The crania that have
"been preserved are all more or leas mutilated ; but about six remain
sufficiently entire to indicate the prevailing conformation to be of iha
long or kumbecephalic type of Dr. Wilson."§ The crania occuring
in graves of this class mentioned by Mr. Bateman alone, exceed
fifty in number, of which the majority are either of the elongated
type, or too imperfect to be determined. The others include between
thirty and forty well-determined examples, besides a greater number
in too imperfect a state to supply more than indications of their
correspondence to the same characteristic form. Alongside of some
of these are also found brachycephalic crania ; but in the most ancient
barrows the elongated skull appears to be the predominant, and iu some
coses the sole type ; and of the examples found in Scotland, several

• Areheeot. Journal, vol xi. p. 313. Crania Sritannita, Dec. L pi. 5, (6).

t Crania Britannica, Dec. lll.pl. 24, (3).

j Ibid, Dec. V. pi. 60 (4.)

B Archeaologia, vol. xix. p. 47.

f Ten Year*' Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Crav* Uilit. p. SSO.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SIGNinCANCE OV

have been recovered from peat boga, or others under circumstances
more definitely marking their great antiquity.

The variations of cranial form are thus, it appears, no gradual transi-
tion, or partial modification, but an abrupt change from an extrem©
dolichocephalic to an extreme brachycephalic type ; which, on the in-
trusion of the new and essentially distinct Anglo-Saxon race, gives
place once more to a dolichocephalic form of medium proportions.
The three forms may be represented, reduced to an abstract ideal of
their essential diversities by means of the following diagram :*

Fig. L

>Fiff.l

Pi?.S.

Leaving, meanwhile, the consideration of the question of distinct
races indicated by such evidence, it will be well to determine first if
such variations of skuU-form can be traced to other than a transmitted
ethnical source. The Juniper Green skull, already referred to, pre-
sents in profile, as shown in the full sized view ia the Crania Britan^
nica, the square and compact proportions characteristic of British
brachycephalic crania. It also exhibits in the vertical outline, the trun.
cated wedge form of the type indicated in Fig. 2. In the most stronglj
marked examples of this form, the vertical or flattened occiput is a
prominent feature, accompanied generally with great parietal breadth,
from which it abrubtly narrows at the occiput. The proportions of
this class of crania were already familiar to me before the discovery of
the Juniper Green example j but it had not before occurred to me to
ascribe any of their features to other than natural causes. But the
circumstances attending its exhumation gave peculiar interest to what,
ever was characteristic in the skull and its accompanying relics, handled
for the first time as evidences of the race and age of the freshly opened
cist, discovered almost within sight of the Scotish Capital, and yet
pert aining to prehistoric time s. The skull was carried home in my

• Owing to inaccurate copying on the p»rt of the wood enRriver. tU dia«r»ma. e»pecl»ll»
nc. Si do not eorreapond oq opposits sideSj as ths" a«ght to d&»

/>^

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

I*
to
1*
iB
S.
)f

hand a distance of several miles, and its truncated outline, and still
more, its flattened occiput attracted special attention, and gave rise to
conversation with my friend Mr. Robert Chambers, who had accom-
panied me on this exploratory excursion. With the temptation of a
novel discovery, I was at first disposed to recognise the traces of art in
this abbreviated form, not only as exaggerating the natural character-
istics, but as a possible source of their production. But a comparison
with examples of the true dolichocepha!" skull, to which I had already
assigned priority in point of time, sufficed to dispel that illusion,
and to satisfy me— of what the examination of the corresponding
classes of Peruvian crania has still more strongly confirmed, — that no
artificial modification can entirely efface the distinctions between two
such diverse forms. At a subsequent meeting of the Society of Anti-
quaries of Scotland, I accompanied the presentation of the cranium
and urn with an account of the circumstances of their discovery, and
gome remarks on the novel features noticeable in the skull. Unfor-
tunately the printing of the Society's Proceedings, which had been
fuspended for some time, was not resumed till the following season ;
and no record of this communication was preserved beyond the title.

Another skull in the same collection, found under somewhat similar
circumstances in a cist at Lesmurdie, Banffshire, has the vertical oc-
ciput accompanied by an unusual parietal expansion and want of height,
fuggestive of the idea of a combin<'d coronal and occipital compres-
iion.* A third Scottish skull, procured from one of a group of cists near
Kinaldie, Aberdeenshire, also exhibits the posterior vertical flattening.
But a more striking example than any of those appears in the one
from Codford, South Wiltshire, selected above to illustrate this type.f
Dr. Davis remarks in his description of it : — "The zygomatic arches
are short, a character which appertains to the entire calvarium, but
is most concentrated in the parietals, to which the abruptly ascending
portion of the occipital lends its influence. The widest part of the
calvarium is about an inch behind, and as much above the auditory
foramen, and when we view it in front we perceive it gradually to ex-
pand from the outer angular process of the frontal to the point now
indicated." The entire parieto-occipital region presents in profile an
abrupt vertical line ; but when viewed vertically it tapers considerably
wore towards the occiput than is usual in crania of the same ulass.

The cause of the vertical occiput, as well as the oblique parieto-oc-

* Crania Britannica, Ikic. it. pi. 16.
t/Md.]>ecU.pll4

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

cipital flattening in this class of British Crania, I feel no hesitation io
believing to be traceable to the same kind of rigid cradle-board as is
in constant use among many of the Indian tribes of America, and which
produces precisely similar results. Its mode of operation, in eifecting
the various forms of oblique and vertical occiputs, will be considered,
when describing some of the phenomena of compre'=<sed Indian crania ;
but another feature of the Juniper Green skull, which is even more
obvious in that from Lesmurdie, in the same collection, is an irregu-
larity amounting to a marked inequality in the developement of the
two sides. This occurs in skulls which have been altered by posthu-
mous compression ; but the recovery of both the examples referred to
from stone cists, precludes the idea of their having been affected by the
latter cause ; and since I was first led to suspect the modification of
the occiput, and the exaggeration of the characteristic proportions of
British brachycephalic crania by artificial means, familiarity with
those of the Flathead Indians, as well as other ancient and modera
artificially distorted American crania, has led me to recognise in
them the constant occurrence of the same unsymmetrical inequality
in opposite sides of the head.

But another class of deformations, of a less marked character than
the well-known distortions produced on many American crania, both
by the undesigned action of the cradle-board, and by protracted com»
pression purposely applied with a view to change the form, merits
the careful attention of craniologists. The normal human head may
be assumed to present a perfect correspondence in its two hemis-
pheres ; but very slight investigation will suffice to convince the ob-
jjerver that few living examples satisfy the requirements of such a
theoretical standard. Not only is inequality in the two sides frequent,
but A perfectly symmetrical head is the exception rather than the rule.
The plastic condition of the cranial bones in infancy, which admits of
all the strange malformations of ancient Macroccphali and modem
Flatheads, also renders the infant head liable to many undesigned
changes. From minute personal examination I have satisfied myself
of the repeated occurrence of inequality in the two sides of the head,
arising from the mother being able to suckle her child only at one
breast, so that the head was subjected to a slight but constantly re*
newed pressure in the same direction. It is surprising, indeed, to how
great &n extent such unsymmetrical irregularity is found to prevail,
wbea once the fttteotioa haa been drawo Io iU The only example of

sCv

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

N?.v

the Greek head possessed by Dr. Mortot^, was n cast presented to him
by Dr. Betzius, and which, from its selection by the distinguished
Swedish craniologist for such a purpose, might reasonably be nssumed
to illustrate the Greek type. It is accordingly described by Dr. J.
Aitken Meigs, in his •• Cranial characteristics of the Race of Man, aa
very much resembling that of Constantine Demetriades. a Greek native
of Corfu, and long a teacher of the modem Greek language at Oxford,
as engraved in Dr. Prichar J's Researches. Its cranial characteristics
are thus defined in the Catalogue of the Mortonian Collec
tion- (No. 1354.) "The calvarial region is well developed, the
frontal hne expansive and prominent, the facial line departs but shght-
ly from the perpendicular.** On recently visiting Philadelphia for the
purpose of renewed examination of its valuable collections. I was sur-
prised to find this head,-^instead of being either oval or as Blumen-
back describes the example selected by him. sub-globular.-^prcsentmg
the truncated form, with extreme breadth at the parietal protuberan.
ces. and then abruptly passing to a flattened occiput. It measures 6.5
longitudinal diameter; 5.7 parietal diameter; and 19.2 horizontal
circumference. But the most noticeable feature is the great inequality
of the two sides, the right side is less tumid than the left, while it pro-
jects more io the rear, and the whole is fully as unsy mmetrical as wany
American crania. Were it not that this feature appears to have wholly
escaped Dr. Morton's attention, as he merely enters it m his catalogue
as a ''Cast of the skull of a young Greek. Prof. Retzius ;" I shou.-^ be
tempted to suppose it had been purposely sent to him to illustrate the
phenomena of unsymraetrical development ; and of the influence of
undesigned artificial causes on ekull-forms.

Dr. Morton was not unobservant of such indications of the frequent
dissimilarity between opposite sides of the skull, nor did he entertam
any doubt as to its cause when occurring as the accompamment
of other artificial changes, though he entirely overlooked its more
general prevalence. When first noticing the probable ongm of the
flattened occiput of certain British skulls. I drew attention to the
t that he had already recognised undesigned artificial compree-
eioH as one source of abnormal cranial conformation, and he accom-
panied its demonstration with a reference to the predominant unsym-
metrical form in all such skulls. "'This irregularity.*' he added,
••chiefly consists in the greater projection of the occiput to one aide
than the other," and «* is not to be attributed to the intentional appU-
catioa of mechanical force." Such want of umformity in the two

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIGNIflCANCE Of

Bides of the head is much more strongly marked in the Flathead skulls,
which have heen subjected to great compression. It is clearly trace-
able to the difficulty of subjecting the living and growing head to a
perfectly uniform arid equable pressure, and to the cerebral mass forc-
ing the skull to expand with it in the direction of least resistance.
Hence the unsymmetrical form accompanying the vertical occiput in
the Lesmurdie and Juniper Green skulls, and. as I conceive also in the;
Greek skull of Retzius. To me, at least, the study of the latter skull-
form has tended strongly to confirm the belief that the extreme abbrevi.
ated proportions of many naturally brachycephalic crania are due ta
artificial causes. Wherever a very noticable inequality exists between
the two sides of a skull, it may be ascribed with much probability to
the indirect results of designed or accidental compression in infancy ;
and by its frequent occurrence in any uniform aspect, may, quite as
much as the flattened occiput, furnish a clue to customs or modes of
nurture among the people to whom it pertains.

Dr. Struthers of Edinburgh has in his collection an interesting ex-
ample of a modern skull, measuring 7^ longitudinal diameter, 6.5
parietal diameter, 21.4 horizontal circumference, in which the trun»
cated form is even more strongly marked by the abrupt nattening,
immediately behind the parietal protuberances, accompanied with
inequality :n the two sides of the head. It was obtained from a grave
digger in Dundee, who stated it to be that of a middle aged female
whom he had known during life. There was nothing particular about
her mental developement.

I have also drawn attention in former papers to the fact that such
peculiar forms and examples of inequality in the developement of the
two sides of the head, are familiar to hat manufacturers. Occasion-
ally the eye is attracted by very unusual cranial forms revealed by
baldness; but the hair suffices generally to corceal abnormal irregulari-
ties, some of which, as illustrated by hatters' shapes, are extremely
odd and fantastical. My attention was origin. ^irected to this
familiar test by a remark of the late Dr. Kombst, . he had never
been able to obtain an English-made hat that would Ii ais head. He
added that he believed such was the general experience of Germans,
owing to the greater length of the English head. I subsequently found
the shapes of a Yorkshire hatter to be shorter than some furnished me
from Dublin ; and I believe that such comparisons of the shapes most

CCRTAIN ANCIBNT BBITISU SKULL FORMS.

in demand in different parts of the British Islands, and on the Con-
tinent, will supply important craniological results.

The novel forms thus occurring in modern hea , though chiefly
traceable, as I believe, to artificial causes, are not the result of design.
But the same is true of the prevalent vertical and obliquely flattened
occiput ot many ancient and modern American crania, as well as of the
British brachycephalic class already described. Nor are such changes
of the natural form necessarily limited to skulls of short longitudinal
diameter, in which this typical characteristic is exaggerated by the
■ pressure of the cradle-board in infancy. Now that tbis source of
modification begins to receive general recognition among craniologists,
its influence is assumed as a probable source of the most diverse aber-
rant forms. Dr. Thurnam, when referring to two skulis of different
shapes, recovered from the same group of British barrows, of " a some-
what late though pre-lioman period," on Koundway Hill, North Wilt-
shire, thus indicates their contrasting characteristics, and suggests the
probable source of such divergence from the supposed British type :
"The general form of the cranium (pi. 43) differs greatly from that
from the adjoining barrow, (pi. -i'i). Tbat approaches an acroceph-
alic, this a platycephalic form ; tbat is eminently brachycephalic, this
more nearly of a dolichocephalic character. As the eye at once de-
tects, the difference is much greater than would be inferred from a
mere comparison of the measurements. The* respective peculiarities
of form in the two skulls, may possibly be explained by supposing
that both have been subject to artificial deformation, tliough of a dif-
ferent kind,— the one appearing to have been flattened on the occiput,
the other showing a depression immediately behind the coronal suture,
over the parietal bones, which seems to indicate that this part of the
ikull was subject to some habitual pressure and constriction, perhaps
from the use of a bandage or ligature tightly bound across the head
and tied under the chin, such as to this day is employed in certain
parts of the west of France, producing that form of distortion named
by Dr. Gosse, the sincipital, or tete hihhier* The influence of the
recognition of this source of change, is indeed very manifest through-
out the fifth Decade of the Crania Britannica. An extremely brachy-
cephalic skull of a youth, obtained from a barrow on Ballard Down,
Isle of Purbeck, is described as unsymmetrlcal, ard as affording " toler-
ably clear evidence that this form, if not always produced, was at least

• Crania Ii)^ta.nnisa, Dec. v. pi. 43.

20 ILLUSTRATIONf OF TH« ttONirlCANCB Of

liable to be exaggerfttcd by an artificial flattening of the occiput, iuch
«B is practised |by many American and Polynesian tribes."* In tU
•ame Decade another skull of the type most dissimilar to this, ii de-
■cribed and illustrated. U was recovered in fragments from the re-
markable chambered barrow at West Kennet, Wiltshire; and
its most characteristic features are thiis defined by Dr. Thur-
nam :— " It is decidedly dolichocephalic, narrow, and very flat
At the sides, and realizes more nearly than any we have yet
bad to figure the kumbecephalic or boatshaped form described by
Dr. D. Wilson. The frontal region is narrow, moderately arched and '
elevated at the vertex, but slopes away on eacii side. The parietal
region is long, and marked by i prominent ridge or carina in the line
of the sagittal suture, which is far advanced towards obliteration,
whilst the other sutures are quite as perfect as usual. The occiput is
full and proHiinent ; the supra-occipital ridges only moderately marked.
Therv! is a deep digastric groove, and a slight paroccipital process on
each side. The external auditory openings are Bomewhat behind the
middle of the skull, and very much behind a vertical line drawn from
the junction of the coronal and sagittal sutures." Its extreme length
and breadth are 77 and 5-1, and an inequality in the development ^f
the two sides is obvious in the vertical view. As the brachycephahc
skull recalls certain American and P jlynesian forms, so such examples
of the opposite type suggest the narr.* .ud elongated skulls of the
Australians and Esquimaux : and • us , rocef Is :— " The Ballard
Down skull bears marks of artificial flattening of the occiput ; this
calls to mind the artificial lateral flattening of the skull characteristic
of ttic ?.icient people called Macrocephali. or long-heads, of whom
Hippocrates tells up *hat 'while the head of the child is still tender,
they fasb'on it with their hands, and constrain it to assume a length-
ened shape by applying bandages and other suitable contrivances,
whereby the spherical form of the aead is destroyed, and it is m'- !e
to increase in length.' This mode of distortion is called by Dr. Gosso
the temporo-parietal, or ' tSte aplatie sur les cStes." It appears to
have been practised by various people, both of the ancient and modern
world, and in Europe as well as the East. The so-called Moors, or
Arabs of North Africa, affected this form of skull ; and even in modern
times, the women of Belgium and Hamburgh are both described as
compressing the heads of their infants into an elongate form. Our
own ol-ervations lead at least to a presumption that this .orm of arti-

• Crania Britannica, Dec- v, pi. 46.

CKRTAIN AKCIENT ORITIsn fKVLL FORMS.

Cciftl distortion may have bet., practised by certain primeval British
tribes, particularly those who buried their distinguished dead in long
chambered tumuli."

Accordingly Dr. Thurnam draws attention to the obliteration of the
•ftgittal suture, both in the skull in queation, and to a still greater
extent in one figured by Blumenbach, under the name of *• Asiatic
Macrocephall," and expresses his belief that this " has been produced
by pressuie or manipulations of the sides of the head in infancy, by
which it was sought to favour the development of a lengthened form
«f skull ; to which, however, there was probably, in the present in-
stance at least, a natural and inherent tendency." It is perhaps
worthy of note here, that a long narrow head has been observed m
characteristic of certain Berber tribes, the occupants of ancient Puuic
sites in North Africa.

It thus appears that a class of variations of the form of the human
skull, which becomes more comprehensive as attention is directed to
it, is wholly independent of congenital transmitted characteristics.
Kumbecephalic, acrocephalic, and platycephalic, unsymmetrical, trun-
cated, or elongated heeds, may be so common as apparently to furnish
distinctive ethnical forms, and yet, after all, each may be traceable to
artificial causes, arising from an adherence to certain customs and
usages in the nursery. It is in this direction, I conceive, that the
importance of the truths resulting from the recognition of artificial
causes affecting the forms of British brachycephalic or other crania
chiefly lies. The contents of early British cists and barrows prove
that the race with which they originated was a rude people, ignorant
for the most part of the very knowledge of metals, or at best in the
earliest rudimentary stage of metallurgic arts. They were in fact in
as uncivilized a condition as the rudest forest Indians of America. To
prove, therefore, that like the Red Indian squaw, the British allophy-
lian or Celtic mother formed the cradle for her babe of a flat boarc^, to
which she bound it, for safety and facility of nursing, in the vicissi-
tudes of her nomade life,— though interesting, like every other recov-
ered glimpse of a long-forgotten past,— is not in itself a discovery of
much significance. But it reminds us how essentially man, c.-en in
the most degraded state of wandering savage life, diff'ers from all other
animals. The germs of an artificial life are there. External appli-
ances, and tiie conditions which we designate as domestication in the
lower animals, appear to be inseparable from him. The most untu-

22 ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OP

tored nomades subject their offspring to many artificial influences,
such as have no analogy among the marvellous instinctive operations
of the lower animals. It is not even unworthy of notice that man is
the only animal to whom a supine position is natural for repose ; and
with him more than any other animal, the head when recumbent,
invariably assumes a position which throws the greatest pressure on
the brain-case, and not on the malar or maxillary bones. Without,
therefore, running to the extreme of Dr. .Norton, who denied, for the
American continent at least, the existence of any true dolichocephalic
crania, or indeed any essential variation from one assumed typical
form, it becomes an important point for the craniologist to determine,
if possible, to what extent certain characteristic diversities may be
relied upon as the inherited features of a tribe cr race ; or whether
they are not the mere result of artificial causes originating in long
perpetu *.ed national customs and nursery usages. If the latter is
indeed the case, then they pertain to the materials of archaeological,
rather than of ethnological deduction, and can no longer be employed
as elements of ethnical classification.

Every scheme of the craniologist for systematisin;^ ethnical
variations of cranial configuration, and every process of induction
pursued by the ethnologist from such data, proceed on the
assumption that su^^h varieties in the form of cranium are constant
within certain determinate limits, and originate in like natural
causes with the features by which we distinguish or nation from
another. By like means the comparative anatomist discriminates
between the remains of the JBos primigenius, the Bos hngifrons, and
other kindred animal remains, frequently found alongside of the human
skeleton, in the barrow: and by a similar crucial comparison the
craniologist aims at classifying the crania of the ancient Briton, Roman,
Saxon, and Scandinavian, apart from any aid derived from the evidence
of accompanying works of art. But if it be no longer disputable that
the human head is liable to modification from external causes, so that
one skull may have been subjected to lateral compression, resulting in
the elongation and narrowing of its form ; while another under the
influence of occipital pressure may exhibit a consequent abbreviation m
its length, accompanied by parietal expansion ; it becomes indispen-
sable to determine some data whereby to eliminate this perturbing
element before we can ascertain the actual significance of national skull-
forms. If, for example,— as appears to be the case,— the crania from
British graves of Roman times reveal a different form from that of

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

the modern Celtic Briton, the cause may he an intermixture of races,
like that which is clearly traceable among the mingled descendants of
"Celtic and Scandinavian blood in the north of Scotland ; but it may
"also be, in part, or wholly, the mere result of a change of national cus-
toms following naturally on conquest, civilization, and the abandon-
ment of paganism for Christianity.

It is in this respect, that the artificial causes tending to alter the
natural conformation of the human head, invite our special study.
They appear at present purely as disturbing elements in the employ-
ment of craniological tests of classification. It is far from improbable,
however, that when fully understood they may greatly extend our
means of classification ; so that when we have traced to such causes
certain changes in form, in vhich modern races are known to differ
from their ethnical precursors, we shall be able to turn the present el-
ement of disturoance to account, as an additional confirmation of
truths established by inductive craniology. Certain it is, however,
whatever value may attach to the systematising of such artificial
forms, that they are of frequent occurrence ; apart altogether from such
configuration as is clearly referrible to the application of mechanical
pressure in infancy with that express object in view ; or again, as is no
less obviously the result of posthumous compression. But, though
the deforming processes designedly practised among ancient and
modern savage nations lie beyond the direct purpose of the present
inquiry, they are calculated to throw important light on the approxi-
mate results of undesigned compression and arrested development.

Among the Flathead Indian tribes of Oregon and the Columbia
River, where malformation of the skull is purposely aimed at, the
infant's head is tightly bound in a fixed position, and m&intained
under a continuous pressure for months. But it is a mistake to sup-
pose that in the ordinary use of the cradle-board the Indian pappoose
is subject to any such extreme restraint. The objects in vie ire fa-
cility of nursing and transport, and perfect safety for the child. But
those being secured it is nurtured with a tenderness of maternal instinct
surpassing that of many savage nations. The infant is invariably laid
on its back, but the head rests on a pillow or mat of moss or frayed
bark, and is not further restrained in a fixed position than necessarily
results from the posture in which the body is retained by the bandages
securing it in the cradle. This fact I have satisfied myself of from re-
peated observations. But the consequence necessarily is, that the sofl
.and pUant bones of the infant's head are subjected to a slight but con-

ILLVSTftATIONS Of T TK tlGNiriCANCB OF

stant pressure on the occiput during the whole protracted period of

nursing, when they are peculiarly sensitive to external influences.
Experiments have shewn that at that period the bones specially affect-
ed by the action of the cradle-board are not only susceptible of chan-
ges, but liable to morbid affections, dependent on the nature of the in-
fant's food. Lehmann supposes the craniotahes of Elsasser to be A
form of rachitis which affects the occipital and parietal bones during
the period of suckling ; and Schlossberger ascertained by a series of
analyses of such bones that the 03 per cent* of n:ineral constituents
found in the normal occipital bones of healthy children during the 6rst
year, diminished to 51 per cent, in the thickened and spongy bone.*
The fluctuations in proportion of the mineral constituents of bones are
considerable, and vary in the different bones, but in the osseous tissue
they may be stated at from 67 to 70 per cent. It is obvious, there-
fore, that, under the peculiar physiological condition of the cranial
bones during the period of nursing, such constant mechanical action
aa the occipital region of the Indian pappoose is subjected to, must be
productive of permanent change. The child is not removed from the
cradle-board when suckling, and is not therefore liable to any counter-
acting lateral pressure against its mother's breast. One effect of such
continuous pressure must be to bving the edges of the bones together^
and thereby to retard, or arrest the growth of the bone in certain dir*
rections. , The result of this is apparent in the premature ossification
of the sutures of artificially deformed crania.

At Washington I had an opportunity of minutely examining thirty-
four Flathead skulls brought home by the United States Exploring
Expedition ; some of them presenting the most diverse forms of dis-
tortion. In the majority of those the premature ossification of the su-
tures is apparent, and in some they are almost entirely obliterated.—
The same is no less obvious among the corresponding class in the col-
lection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia ; and es-
pecially in skulls of the Chinooks, who rarry the process of deforma<-
tion to the greatest extent. But I have also been struck, not only
with the frequent occurrence of wormian bones in such altered skulls,
but also with the distinct definition of a true supraoccipital bone.

It is marvellous to see the extraordinary amount of distortion to
which the skull and brain may be subjected without seemingly affecting
either health or intellect. The coveted deformity is produced partly

• Schloisbergor. Arch, f. phys. Heilk. Lehmann, Physiol. Chem. Vol. HI. p, IS.

* *

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

by actual compression, and partly by the growth of the brab and skull
Wne thereby limited tc certain directions. Hales, the Ethnographer
of the Exploring Expedition, after describing the process " F^^tised
.mong the Chinooks. remarks: -fhe appearance of the child when
5u.t released from this confinement is truly hideous. The transverse
diameter of the head above the ears is nearly twice aa great as the
longitudinal, from the forehead to the occiput. The eyes, which tre
natur.dly deep set, become protruding and appear as if squeezed par-
tially out of the head."* Mr. Paul Kane in describing to me the
.ame appearance, as witnessed by him on the ^^l""^^^* J«;»^^'' *^"-
pared the eyes to those of a mouse strangled m a trap, ihe appeal^
auce is little less singular for some time after the child has been freed
ftom the constricting bandages ; as shown in an engraving from one
of Mr. Kane's sketches of a Chinook child seen by him at lotl
Astoria • In after years the brain as it increases, partially rccorere
iti shape i and in some of the deformed adult skulls one suture gapes,
while all the rest are ossified, and occasionally a fracture, or false
tnture remains open. An adult skull of the same extremely deiormed
shape, among those brought home by the Exploring Expedition,
illustrates the great extent to which the brain may be subjected to
compression and malformation without affecting the intellect. It ts
that of a Nasqually chief, procured from his canoe bier m Washington
Territory. (No. 4549.) The internal capacity, and consequent
Tolurae of brain, is 95 cubic inches. The head is compressed into a
flattened disc, with the forehead receding in a straight hue from the
nasal suture to the crown of the head, while the lambdoidal suture is
on the same plane with the foramc i magnum. The sutures are
nearly all completely ossified ; and the teeth ground qmte flat, as is
common with many of the tribes in the same region, and especially
with the Walla-walla Indians on the Columbia River, who live chiefly
on salmon, dried in the sun, and invariably impregnated with the
•and which abounds in the barren waste they occupy. I assume the
unimpaired intellect of the Nasqually chief from his rank. The
Flathead tribes are in the constant habit of making slaves of the
Roundheaded Indians ; but no slave is allowed to flatten or otherwise
modify the form of her child's head, that being the badge of Flathead
aristocracy. As this has been systematically pursued since ever the

• EthttOf?rjiphy of the U. 8. Exploring Expedition, p. 216.
t Prehiitoric Man, Vol. «. p. 320.

IIXVSTRATI0N8 OP TUB BIGNIFICANCB OP

I ^

tribes of the Pacific coftst were brought under the notice of Euro-
peans, it is obvious that if such superinduced deformity developed any
general tendency to cerebral disease, or materially affected the intel-
lect, the r<'snU would be apparent in the degeneracy or extirpation of
the Flathead tribes. But so far is this from being the case, that they
4re described by traders and voyagers, as acute and intelligent. They
are, moreover, an object of dread to neighbouring tribes who retain
the normal form of head ; and they look on them with contempt as
thus bearing the hereditary badge of slaves.

The child born to Kuch strange honours is laid, soon after ils birth,
tipon the cradle-board, an oblong piece of wood, somtimes slightly hirf-
lowed, and with a cross board projecting beyond the head to protect it
from injury. A small pad of leather stuffed with moss or frayed
cedar-bark is placed on the forehead and tightly fastened on either
side to the board j and this is rarely loosed until its final removal be-
fore the end of the ''rst year. The skull has then received a form
which is only slightly modified during the subsequent growth of the
brain. But the very same kind of cradle is in use among all
the Indian tribes. It b indeed varied as to its ornamental ad-
juncts, and non-essential details ; but practically it resolves itself,
in every case, into a straight board to which the infant is bound ; and
as it is retained in a recumbent position, and thus the pressure of
its own weight during the period when, as has been shown, the occi-
pital and parietal bones are peculiarly soft and compressible, is made
to act constantly in one direction. This, I assume to have been the
cause of the vertical or otherwise flattened occiput in the ancient British
brachycephalic crania. The same cause must tend to increase the
characteiisLic shortness in the longitudmal diameter, to produce the
premature ossification of certain sutures, and to shorten the zygoma,
with probably also some tendency to make the arch bulge out in iti
effort at subseqrent full growth, and so to widen the face.

Dr. J. Barnard Davis has applied the term *• parieto-occipital flat-
ness/* where the results of artificial compression in certain British
skulls extend over the parietals with the upper portion of the occipi*
tal ; and he appears to regard this as something essentially distinct from
the vertical occiput,* But it is a form of common occurrence in
Indian skulls, and is in reality the most inartificial of all the results of
the undesigned pressure of the cradle-board. This will be understood

* Nat. Hist. Review, Ju];. ls£2. Athensnm, Sept, 27Ui, 1863, p. 401.

CERTAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKULL FORMS.

by a very simple experiment. If the observer lie down on the floot»
without a pillow, and then ascertain what part of the back of the
head touches the ground, he will find that it is the portion of the
occiput immediately above the lambdoidal suture, and not the occipi-
tal bone. When the Indian mother places ft sufficiently high pillow
for her infant, the tendency of the constant pressure will be to
produce the vertical occiput ; bcH where, as is more frequently the case.
the board has a mere cover of moss or soft leather, then the result
will be just such an oblique pf.rietal flattenning, as is shewn on a
British skull from the remarkable tumulus near Littleton Drew»
Wiltshire. Crania Britannica, Decade III. plate 24.

But there are other sourcea of modilicatioD of the human skull in
infancy, even more common than the cradle- ' ')ard More than oiO
of the predominant head-forms in Normandy and Belgium are now
traced to artificial changes j and by many apparently trifling and un-
heeded causea, consequent on national customs, nursing usages, or
the caprices of dress and fashion, the form of the head may be modi-
fied in the nursery. The constant laying of the infant to rest^ on its
aide, the pressure in the same direction in nursing it, along with the
fashion of cap. hat, or wrappage, may all influence the shape of head
among civilized nations, and in certain cases tend as much to exagger-
ate the naturally dolichocephalic ekuU. as the Indian cradle-board
increases the short diameter of the opposite type. Such artificial era-
nial forms as that designated by M. Foville, the TSte annulaire, may
have predominated for many centuries throughout certain rural dis-
tricts of France, solely from the unreasoning conformity with which
the rustic nurse adhered to the traditional or prescriptive bandagei
t<> which he ascribes that distortion. All experience shows that
Buch usages are among the least eradicable, and long survive tho
ehock of revolutions that change dynasties and efi'ace more important
national characteristics.

But now that attention has been directed to the subject of unde-
•igned changes thus effected on the human head, its full bearings be-
gin to be appreciated ; and there is even, perhaps, a danger that mor«
cjay be ascribed to them than is legitimate. Such was undoubtedly
the effect on Dr. Morton's mind from his familiarity with the results of
artificial deformation on American crania; and were we to follow his ex-
ample, we should be tempted to designate all the extreme varieties of the
elongated dolichocephulio, acrocephalic, and brachycephalic skull*
of British barrows, as mere modifications of the same ethnical form.

ILLVfTRATIONS OF TBS •lOlfiriCAltCK Or

"1 ',

Iq his latest recorded opioions, when commenting on iome of the ab*
norni&l forms of Peruviaa crania* he remarks : " I at first found it diffi-
eult to conceive that the original rounded skull of the Indian could be
changed into this fantastic form ; and was led to suppose that the latter
was an artificial elongation of a head remark:^ble for ita length and
narrowness. I even supposed that the loug-headed Peruvians were
a more ancient people than the Inca tribes, and distinguished from
them by their cranial configuration. In this opinion I was mistaken*
Abundant means of observaticn and comparison have since convinced
ne that all these variously -formed heads were originally of the same
■hape, which is characteristic of the aboriginal race from Cape Uom
to Canada, and that art alone has caused the diversities among them.***
The repeated opportunities 1 have enjoyed of examining the Morton-
tan and other American collections, have satisfied me of the occur>
rence of both dolichocephalic and brachycephalic crania not only as
the characteristics of distinct tribes, but also among the contents of
the same Peruvian cemeteries,— -not as examples of extreme latitudes
of form in a common race, but as the results of the admixture either of
conquering and subject races, or of distinct classes of nobles and serfs*
most generally resulting from the predominance of conquerors.f
Among the Peruvians the elongated cranium pertained to the domi-
nant race ; and some of the results of later researches in primitive
British cemeteries, and especially the disclosures of the remarkable
class of chambered barrows, seem to point to an analogous condition
of races. That the Uley and West Kennet skulls may have been
laterally compressed, while the Codford barrow and other brachy-
cephalic skulls have been affected in the opposite direction, appears
equally probable. But auch artificial influences only very partially
account for the great diversity of type ; and no such causes, even if
brought to bear in infancy, could possibly convert the one into the
other form.

But as the cranial forms, both of the Old and ^ew World, betray
evidences of modification by such artificial means ; so also we find in an-
cient Africa a diverse form of head, to which art may have contributed,
solely by leaving it more than usually free from all extraneous influ-
ences. Such at least is the conclusion suggested to my mind from the
examination of a considerable number of Egyptian ekuUs. Among
famiJiar relics of domestic usages of the ancient Egyptians is the pil-

* Physical Type of the Ameriean Indian, Schoolcraft : |>- 320.
t Frthittorie if aw. vol it. |». 82A.

canoK 4HCUIIT nmiB wrau. wmiM. »

w .lM;<m*d for tk» neck, mi not tlio be»4 to mt upon. SaeU
XlT^fo "d of miniaturo .i.e,, indicating that th. Bgypt»a
Cr»e«Ue.t infancy without hi, bead being .ubjected .«a
to o S . pre».ur« a. the pillow, while ho rested recnmben^.
S..Egypuan.Lli. long, with great breadth and fulne=. m th.
poaterio'region. In it. prominent, rounded P^'^'^Pf ' »°;
formation, an equally .triking contrast .. presented to the Brit»h
bmh7ceph.lie.kuU with truncated occiput, and to the opposit.
Se chLacteristie of the primitive dolichocepbal c skull ; though
"ceptionJ example, are not rare. Thi. ehara"c <l.d n^^^ escap.
Dr. Mortoii'. observant eyej and i. repeatedly indicated m th.
Cronu, ^vptiaca under the designation, •■tumid occiput. It
So ."pe^d'to me after careful examination of the A- collec .on
formed by him. «id now in the Academy of Natural S"ence. »f
FMadelphia, that the Egyptian crania are generally charactened by
e»siderabir.ymmetrical uniformity i as wa. to be anticipated tf
Sere i. any truth in the idea of undesigned artificial compression
„d deformation resulting from such .imple cause, a, accompany
the mode of nurture in infancy.

Th. head, of the Fiji Islander, supply . mean, of testing th.
»me cause, operating on a brach, cephalic form of cranium ; a, most
Tth. Islander, of the Fiji group employ .neck piUow near^
Liar to that of th. ancient Egyptians, and with the same purpo^
rtfew, that of preserving their elaborately dressed hair f^m
Lhevelment. In their case, judging from an example m the collec-
tion of the Bo, a College of Surgeons of London, the occipitd re^on
ta broad, and present, in profile a uniform, rounded conformation pa.
Sn7Smo.t imperceptibly into the coronal region. Indeed the broad.
t^U rolded occiput i.'considered by the Fijian, a great beau^.
TO. bearing of this, however, in relation to the present argument
Lend, on whether or not the Fiji neck-piUow is -»■! "^^-"f'^y- "^
Xh 1 am uncertain. The necessity which suggests it, use at .
S« period, doe, not then exist, but the P^/lf . "«^ "J^n
"peciJ form of pillow for adults is likely to lead to't, adopt on
from the first. In on. male Fiji skull brought home by the X^ni ed
etate. Exploring Expedition (No. 4581). the occiput exhibits the
characteriL full, rounded form, with a large and well defined
«™ipital bo;.. But in another skull in the same co lection^
tUr.f Vrindovi. Chief of Kantavu. who was taken prisoner by the

i t

ILlVerSATlONt OF T8E SICNtrtCANCK OF

i '■:

Fnitcd States ship Peacock, to 1840, and died at New York ia
1842, the occiput, though full, is slightly vertical. The occipital
development of the Fiji crauiuin ia the more interesting as we are
now familiar with the fact that ati artificially flattened occiput is
of common occurrence among the islanders of the Pacific Ocean.
•• In the Malay race/* saya Pr. Pickering, « a more marked pecu-
liarity, and one very generally observable, ia the elevated occiput,
»nd its slight projection beyond the line of the neck. The Mongo-
lian traits are heightened artificially in the Chinooks ; but it ia less
generally known that a slight pressure ia often applied to the occiput
by the Polynesians, in conformity with the Malay standard."* Dr.
Nott.in describing the skull of a Kanfka of the Sandwich Islands who
died at the Marino Hospital at Mobile, mentions his being struck by
its singular occipital formation ; but this he learned was due to an
artificial flattening which the Islander had stated to hia medical
attendants in the hospital, was habitually practised in hfa family .f
According to Dr. Davis, it ia traceable to so simple a source aa the
Kanaka mother's habit of supporting the head of her nursling in
the palm of her hand.ij Whatever be the cause, the fact ia now well
established. The occipital flattening ia clearly defined in at least
three of the Kanaka skulls in the Mortouiau Collection ; No. 1300,
a male native of the Sandwich Islands, aged about forty ; No. 1308,
apparently that of a woman, from the same locality ; and in number
€95 a girl of Oahu, of orobably twelve years of age, which ia mark-
edly unsymmetrical, and with the flattening on the left side oi the
parietal and occipital bones. The Washington Collection includes
fourteen Kanaka skulls ; besides others from various Islands of tho
Pacific, among which several examples of the same artificial forma-
tion occur; e.g. No. 45ej7, a large male skull, distorted and unsym-
metrical ; and No. 4367, (female?) from an ancient cemetery at
Wailika, Mani, in which the flattened occiput is very obvious.

The traces of ^ arposed deformation of the head among the Island-
ers of the Pacific have an additional interest in their relation to one pos-
sible source of South American population by oceanic migration, sug-
gested by philological and other independent evidence. But for our
present purpose the peculiar value of those modified skulls lies in the
disclosures of infiuences operating alike undesignedly, and with a
well defined purpose, in producing the very same cranial conforma-

• Pickering's Races of Man, p. 46.

t Typet of Matikind, p. 436.

tCranut Tit. itnt,tMr/m TViw. tvt n\ *A IA\

<►

III

CKATAIN ANCIENT BRITISH SKUtL fORMS.

lion among racea occupying the British Islands m ages long ftnteno?
to earliest history j and among the savage tribes of America, and tho
aimple Islanders of the Pacific ia the present day. They illustrate,
with even greater force than the rude implements of flint and atone
found in early British graves, tho exceedingly primitive condition of
the British Islandera of prehiatorie times.