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42 CRANIA BRITANNICA. [CiLVP. IV.
becomes a question, whetlier we may not regard this instance as an example of siich a custom.
Should this view bo once admitted, which 'ndll in all likelihood he ascertained by continued
observations in Germany, England and Prance, when the importance of attention to ancient
crania is properly appreciated, we may be in a position hereafter to question whether the
presumed skuUs of Avars, discovered ia so many different places of Austria and Switzerland, are
not reaUy relics of the aboriginal tribes who have died in their native seats. The facts are at
present scanty, but the writer has been of opinion, fi'om the first, that it is most probable
the result now indicated -ivill ultimately be found to he correct. Should such a conclusion
be established, this Harnham example wiU prove the practice to have been applied to females,
perhaps to have been brought from the forests of Germany by the Anglo-Saxon invaders
of Britain, and confirm the probability that it was not very generally, but on the contrary
rarely employed, as if it were a remnant of one of the ancient customs of the West Saxons
before they crossed the sea*.
But observations made in Prance bring to light the extraordinary fact that the practice of
distorting the skull in infancy is not yet extinct, even in Europe. The subject has engaged the
attention of an eminent observer, whose opportunities have been great—M. Eoville—who,
besides publishing a pamphlet relating to it some years agot, has again taken it up in his
large work on the Anatomy of the Nervous System. ' In the fine Atlas of this latter book.
Dr. Eovflle has figured examples of deformed heads of the rural population of Erance. One
singular instance, equalling in deviation from its natural state those of the ancient cemeteries of
Peru, is the head of a peasant of Normandy, who appears to have been an inmate of a lunatic
asylum. Dr. Poville informs us that distorting processes, which are concurrent with the
prevailing modes of applying constricting coverings to the heads of infants, obtain in different
provinces of Prance, with some variations in the proceedings adopted, and consequently in their
results. He gives pre-eminence to Normandy, hut mentions also Gascony, Limousin and
Brittany. Beam he expressly excepts as more favoured than other provinces, since the headdress
of infants is here attached by strings under the chin. It is also remarkable, as presenting
a sensibly less number of insane than other provinces in which the constrictive bandages are
used. This supports the author's opinion, that the distortion of the craniimi may have some
tendency to interfere with the functions of the brain, and in aU probability to induce insanity
and other diseases. Tet, in aUuding to one of the cities of those provinces in which the distortion
* This Harnham skull has a very close resemblance, both
in size and peculiarity of form, to that depicted in plate 3 of
the ' Crania Americana,' from a desiccated mummy of a Peruvian
woman, obtained on the borders of the desert of Ataeama.
To the description Dr. Morton adds, that the skulls
brought from Titicaca by Mr. Pentland " are strikingly like
the specimen here figured, both as respects their general form,
their narrow face, their small size and their several diameters;
yet they present more obvious marks of artificial modification "
(p. 108). The traces of the distorting jsrocess are exceedingly
slight, if at all perceptible, in the Saxon specimen. If, according
to the opinion of Dr. Tselindi, which we are aware receives
countenance from current hypotheses, we were to refer
this example to a Peruvian origin, we should commit a great
error. "Whether a reference to an Avarian source would be any
more correct, we have stated our doubts above.
There is an example of a posthumously distorted skull in
the British Museum, in an imperfect Anglo-Saxon cranium
derived from the cemetery of Little WUbraham m Cambridgeshire,
which was excavated by the Hon. R. C. Neville (Saxon
Obsequies, 1852). This instance has been somewhat lengthened,
and also obliquely flattened by the force compressing it
in the grave, which has dislocated the bones at the coronal
suture on one side, not on the other. It is by these two marks,
the imequal effects on the two sides, and the dislocations at
the sutures, that posthumous distortion may be best discriminated.
In the deformed cranium from Harnham they arc
both entirely wanting.
t Deformation du Crâne résultant de la Méthode la plus
générale de couvrir la Tête des Enfants, 1834.
CHAP. IV.] DISTORTIONS OP THE SKULL. 43
prevails and is very obvious, apparently Toulouse, the artists of which have not failed to mark
and represent the characteristic deformity of head in the portraits of the celebrated men of the
department hung up in the Hôtel de Ville, he admits that the deformation of the cranium is not
always an obstacle to the most perfect exercise of the inteUectual faciûties an opinion which is
more in accordance with that of Dr. Morton and others, who have had extensive opportunities of
observing the Indians of North America, who modify the form of the head so materially, and
yet exhibit no moral or inteUectual inferiority to such of their neighbours as are contented with
heads of the natural shape*. As an example of modern artificial distortion of the cranium of
Em-opean lineage we present the subjoined woodcut, taken from the skull of an old Prench
Distorted Skull of a modern French Woman, oet. c. 70.—Half-size.
woman in our coUection. We believe she was an inmate of a lunatic asylum in one of the
Southern Departments of Erance, and was distinguished for her vicious disposition. It presents
the most usual variety of deformation observed in Erance, that which has been denominated by
MM. Poville and Gosse Tête annulaire. It is produced by a circular compression of the head,
from about the situation of the coronal suture round the lowest part of the occiput at the hack
of the neck. This gives the cranium an elongated, somewhat cylindrical form, which frequently
terminates behind at the vertex by an abrupt deflection of the parietals. It appears to be most
common among females, if not peculiar to them.
We possess a photograph of the natiu-al size of a skull in the Galérie Anthropologique of
the Museum of Natural History at Paris, which presents the same manner of distortion. The
skull is laheUed " Crâne ancien trouvé à Lozerres (Seine et Oise)." Not having seen the
skuU itself, we have no means of determining the period to which it belongs ; but, from the
photograph, it appears to be very ancient, and leads to the query—whether this peculiar mode of
deformation may not he a relic of antiquity ?
* Traité complet de 1'Anatomic, de la Physiologie et de la
Pathologie du Système Nerveux, par M. Foville, i. p. 632,1844.
The observations of M. Foville have been greatly extended and
rendered more complete in different Departments of France by
( J . B. D.)
Dr. L. Lunier (Deux-Sèvres), Annales Medieo-Physiologiques,
1852; Dr. Alquié; Dr. Chas. Lespès (Haute Garonne), and
others. See Gosse, " Essai sur les Déformations artificielles du
Crâne," p. 16, 43, 62, &c. 1855.
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