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ANCIENT BRITISH—RODMARTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
by a third stone placed in front, by which the opening was concealed, as shown in our
lithographic plate (fig. 3). The chamber was entirely free from rubble, but contained the
remams of thirteen persons, which appeared to have been deposited in a crouching posture
Among the bones were a nodule of siUceous grit, as big as the fist, very much battered; a
few shards of rather thin, black, rude pottery; a small fragment of a fine green stone, ground
and rudely polished; a large flint from which flakes had been broken ofi', and three flakes and
two finely chipped leaf-shaped arrow-heads of flint, of the same type with others from long
barrows in Wiltshire and Yorkshire- there were also a few burnt bones, which, Uke those
from the chambered barrow at Nympsfield, were very imperfectly incinerated, and some of them
merely charred.
The skulls, many of which were encrusted with stalagmite, are those of six or seven men,
three or foiu- women, and three children, of about 2, 3, and 12 years. Those of the adults are of
middle age, none perhaps of more than 55 years. The thigh-bones of the men measure 17 to 17^
inches, the tibiae 14 to 14i in. ; the thigh-bones of the women 15 to 16 in., the tibiae l U to
12^ m . , _ t h e estimated height being 5 ft. 4 inches for the men, and 5 ft. for the women f . Though
the remams of a people of short stature, the form of the bones shows that they were endowed with
poweiM and vigorous frames. Three cervical vertebra3 are completely anehylosed-a condition
observed m the hmnan remains from the south chamber, as well as in others from the chambered
barrows at Uley and Nympsfield, and from the long barrow at Winterbourn Stoke, and which
some pecuHari^ty in the mode of life of these people. The three male
1 11 /-XT T n > ^X i ^ o v y JJCVJjJlC. illtJ Lliret
skulls (Nos. 1, 2, 3), are of fuU size and well preserved, as is also the female skull (No 4) l All
AH
are of the elongate doUchocephalic type, and more or less 10.e the skuUs from the chambered
barrows of Uley, Nympsfield, Charlton-Abbots, Littleton-Drew, and West Kennet. The upper
part of the occiput is fuU, rounded, and projecting; there are slight traces of postcoronal
depression; the frontals are low and narrow ; the superciliaries and glabelte prominent The
superior maxillaries are very short, and very slightly, if at all prognathic; the crowns of the
teeth are more or less considerably eroded.
Pour of the skulls present numerous deep clefts and gashes, inflicted apparently durinc- life
and probably the death-wounds §. They are those of men from 30 to 50 years of a^e The first
(No. 5) IS very remarkable, presenting a clean, straight cleft through the whole of the frontal
and the an erior halves of the two parietals; the edges of the cleft are sharp and stained brown
I n the centre of the frontal is a hole, the size of a sixpence, continuous at its upper border with
the cleft of which it forms the centre. The less elongate type of this skull i ! due to the per
(a hole througli which a man can creep) is approached by a
passage formed of dry walhng on each side.
* See an arrow-head in the collection of the writer, from the
long barrow on Alton Down, North Wilts ; and others in the
Bateman Musenm, from long barrows in Derbyshire and at
Heslerton-on-the-Wolds, Yorkshire. (Ten Years' Diggings,
pp. sr,. M5, 146, 230. Sir W. R. Wilde, Catalogue, &c '
p. 22.)
t The stature, as here estimated, is obtained by taking the
length of the fomur as 27-5 of the total height, according to
Dr. Humphry's Tables of the Measurements of 25 skeletons
(Unman Skeleton. 185S, pp. lOG, 108). This method gives a
69.
somewhat less stature than that obtained by the more artificial
methods described in this work (Plates 42, 51, notes).
t See Table II. of Measurements of Ancient British Skulls
"C. B. '
5 Skulls cleft in this manner were first observed, by the
writer, in the exploration of the chambered barrow at West
liennet (PI. 50; and Arehieologia, vol. xxxviii. p. 405) and
were regarded as those of slaves immolated at the obsequies of
their chief - a conclusion, perhaps, more probable than that
they were inflicted in battle. Cleft skulls, seen also in a cist
ni the Littleton-Drew tumulus (PI. 24. p. 3), and in the
chamber of that of Uley (PI. 5), have since been found by the
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