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DESCEIPTIONS OF CEANIA.
The skeletons were literally surrounded and covered with the bones of the water-vole, for
which animal this barrow had been a hibernacle for many generations. Near that of the
woman was a cow's tooth, an accompaniment of the more ancient interments. Around her neck
had been placed an elaborate black necklace, formed of various beads and other pieces of an
imperfect jot, with a central pendant of bone. The pieces composing this necklace were in
the utmost confusion, as the sinews, upon which they had been threaded, had perished soon after
interment. They amoimt to no less than 420 in number; 348 being small beads, 54 of larger size,
and the remaining 18 pieces, studs and plates, some of which are ornamented with punctured
patterns. The ingenuity of its discoverer has been very successfully displayed in the restoration
of this ancient and complex ornament; a figm-e of which he has enabled us to place under the
eye of the reader.
This beautiful object does not stand alone as a specimen of aboriginal decorative art, Mr.
Bateman's researches among the barrows of Derbyshire and Staffordshire having revealed other
Jet Necklace from Middleton Moor Barrow,
jet necklaces; ornaments prized in life by ancient British women, and often interred with them
as pledges of affection. Thi-ee have been engraved in the " Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire
; " that from "Windle HiU, p. 89, and those from Cow Lowe, at p. 92 ; and we are permitted
to place another on the opposite page from Grind Lowe. That from Middleton Moor will be
perceived to be the most complex. The material of which they are fashioned is an imperfect
jet, most probably derived from the Yorkshire coast.
The graceful cranium itself from the cist on Middleton Moor is a rare instance of the perfect
preservation of the bones. Every tooth is in its place; the fragile nasal bones are quite uninjui
ed; and, notwithstanding the remoteness of the age to which it belongs, the careful hands of
Mr. Bateman have sufficed to withdraw it from its ancient hiding-place with no other defect than
the loss of a small fragment of the outer edge of one orbit, and a fracture of the zygomatic arch,
both on the right side.
35. (2)
ANCIENT BRITISH—MIDDLETON MOOR, DERBYSHIRE.
It is the skull of a woman of probably upwards of 40 years of age; and presents the
characters of the ancient British race, although a relic of the female sex. It may be regarded
as brachy-cephalic, exhibiting a considerable breadth in the situation of the parietal bosses,
which descends undiminished down to the neighbourhood of the mastoids. The teeth, of ivory
whiteness, present the usual detrition, being worn down to a level surface; and in the ordinary
moUnary manner, the surfaces declining from above and within, downwards and outwards. They
are surrounded by alveolar arches of considerable expansion and roundness. The lower jaw
bears the impress of the general shortness of the skull as distinctly as any other part. Its angle
Jet Necklace from Grind Lowe.
is more expressed and everted on the right side than on the left. The arch of the palate is fine and
lofty, and gave full space to that flexile organ it enshi-ouded—whose sweet modulations doubtless
were once welcome to a heart of greater sternness. AU the other facial features present a feminine
smallness, especially the orifices of the orbital and nasal cavities. The forehead is well
expanded, and rather swollen about the frontal protuberances. It passes upwards into a full and
smoothly arched vault, which swells out a good deal at the parietal protuberances, the interparietal
diameter being maiatained down to the neigbbom-hood of the mastoids, and then descends
rather suddenly towards the slightly prominent supra-occipital, and finally into that full and
tumid infra-occipital region which is diagnostic of the cranium of a woman. This sudden
descent is the consequence of a certain degree of that pai-ieto-occipital flatness described in other
places. The mastoids, the zygomatic arches, and the semicircular lines are all small. The right
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