Looking at the osteological remains as a whole, perhaps the most striking point is the great disproportion in the sizes and the lengths of certain of the long bones, and, by consequence, in heights, of the male and female skeletons respectively. The male skeletons were very ordinarily about 5 feet 6 inches in height, as against a height of but 4 feet 10 inches attained to by the female. The average difference between the statures of males and females in civilised races is about half this amount, whilst a precisely similar disproportion is observable at the present day between the stature of individuals of the two sexes amongst savages.¹ The clavicles show the disproportionate smallness of the females even more strikingly than the bones already alluded to Professor Busk has recorded the small size and delicate form of the clavicles from the Gibraltar caves.²

Note 1. The late Sir Andrew Smith, K.C.B., informed me, that from extensive observations, carried on for aperiod of seventeen years, in South Africa, he could assure me that the Amakosa Kaffrs to the eastward of the colony averaged near 5 feet 8½ inches, women 5 feet inch. (See Archæologia," 1870, vol. xlii. p. 457, where I put this observation, and a number of other measurements bearing upon this point, on record.) Gustav Fritsch, in his work, Die Eingeborenen Süd Afrikas," s. 17, gives 171.8 cm. (5 feet 7) inches) as the average stature of men of that race of Kaffrs just mentioned, and at p. 24 he says of the females: P degen die weiblichen Individuen in der Entwickelung den mannlichen nachBtehen was wohl in der unterdrückten politischen Stellung der Frauen seinen Grund hat ; but he does not give their exact stature. At p. 216 this author says, Die Frauen der Ovaberero erscheinen in gleicher Weige wie der übrigen Süd Afrikanischen Nigritier in Vergleich mit den Männern unbedeutend," and at p. 277 he gives 160.4 cm. (5 feet 3 inches) for the average stature of ten male Hottentots, as against 144.2 (4 feet 8 inches) for the average attained from measuring four females of the same tribe. When, however, the stature of the male members of a race falls as low as that just given for the female Hottentot, the stature and other dimensions of the sexes appear to be nearly identical. This is the case with the Bushmen (see p. 398, l.c.). The measurements, however, given by Weisbach in the Anthropological part of the Reise von Novara," 1867, p. 216, do not show that the discrepancy between the stature of the sexes of savage races rises in a direct proportion with their savagery, the greatest difference put there upon record being that between Java men, 1679 mm., and Java women, 1461.2, and amounting to inches, whilst the difference recorded between Australian men and Australian women is only 65 mm. (2½ inches). A similar disproportion, and one even greater than that recorded by Weisbach for the Javanese males and females, has been reported to me, as the rule amongst the Japanese ; whilst, on the other hand, a Report on the Aborigines of Victoria," 1859, p. 45 (cit. Davis, Thesaurus Craniorum," p. 364), gives 5 feet 6 inches ag the avenge height of eleven Australian men, as against 4 feet 10½ inches of an Australian woman. (See, however, Davis, Phil. Trans." for 1868, p. 524.) The honourableposition assigned to, or obtained by, the female sex amongst the Germanic races may be considered as testified to by the near approach to equality in stature which, even in ancient times (see Smith's Dictionary of Geog.," Art. Germania') was observed to exist between the sexes. Likarzig, however, most surely under- estimates the difference when, in part following Quetelet and Bednär, he gives, in his great work, Das Gesetz des Wachsthumes," p. 4, Taf. i., ii., iii., iv., 175 cent. (68.899 inches) as the average male stature, and 173 cent. (67.111 inches) ag the average female stature. The rationale of all this lieg in the earlier attain. ment of puberty by the female sex in our species, and the consequent early con. Bignment of the females, in savage varieties of it, to child-bearing and hard labour. Mr. Dobson's paper on the Andamans and Andamanese," published in the preceding number of the Journal of this Institute, p. 457, furnishes b good illustration of this principle. (See especially Plate xxxi.)

Note 2. Trans. Internut. Congress Prehist. Archæology," 1869, p. 158.

To the relative size of the skulls in the two sexes in prehistoric times, the doctrine laid down by Retzius in 1845², and re-affirmed in 1854 by Hüschke², as to the upper and lower classes of modern society, and the civilised and uncivilised races of modern days, is ordinarily supposed to apply, mutatis mutandis. Broca, in his interesting paper on the " Caverne de l' Homme Mort," says³ " L'un des traits les plus remarquables de la série de l' Homme Mort, c'est la grande capacité relative du crâne des femmes." The head of the female occupants of this cavern, like the head of the rustic Dalecarlian females, as observed upon by Retzius, was but little—some 99.50 cub. cent. ( 6 cubic inches) —inferior in capacity to that of their male fellow Troglodytes, whilst the difference between the modern Frenchman of Paris and the modern Frenchwoman is more than twice as great as this amount. Where a woman is told by symbols, no less than by precepts, as Tacitus tells us⁴, the German women were told, venire se laborum periculorumque sociam, idem in pace idem inprælio passuram ausuramque, it is easy to understand, upon the principle of natural selection, how an equality, or, at least, a near approach to equality, in the physical, as well as in the moral and mental character of the sexes, may come to prevail, and how the weight and stature of the entire body in the female sex may approximate to the proportion of the male sex. Such, however, is rarely the case in savage tribes and times, and what we usually find, both among modern savages, as testified to by Weisbach⁵, and amongst prehistoric men, as I have found, is an exaggeration in the females of the disproportion which exists, even in civilised races, between their brain and their entire body weight, to the disfavour of the latter, which is relatively heavier in the other sex.

Note 1. Müller's Arch.," 1845, p. 89.

Note 2. Schädel, Hirn. und Seele," p. 48.

Note 3. Revue d'AnthropoIogie," ii. I, p. 45, 1873 ; and Bull. Soc. Anth.," Paris, Tom. viii. ser. ii. p. 832, 1874.

Note 4. "Germania," 18.

Note 5. "Reise der Novara," 1867, Anthrop. Theil,'s. 222.

Continues Page 139 ...

Swell i. (Pl. iv.). — The first of the three barrows examined is situated in a field which has been under cultivation from 27 to 30 years, though it is still known as the "Cow Common [Map]." The other two barrows were found by us in 1874 to have the heart-shaped or "horned" eastward ends, which are so well known to us from Dr. Anderson's¹ descriptions of the horned cairns of Caithness," as also from Dr. Thurnam's² accounts of the tumuli at Uley and Belas Knap, in this very county of Gloucestershire. There is, as it appears to me, a great probability that the barrow, Swell i. , was originally constructed with the same outlines and contour as these other barrows ; but the eastward end had been much reduced in size by removal of the stones of which it was made up, to fill up an adjacent quarry, in the years 1867-1868 ; and in 1874 some indistinct traditions as to the existence in former years of curved walling at that end, were the only main specific basis—as distinct from the general likelihood arising out of its other still remaining points of resemblance to typical horned barrows—for holding that it probably had been one. Making allowances, however, for the demolitions which had taken place in the years 1867 and 1868, and, possibly enough, in years long before them, we shall not be far wrong in saying that the extreme length of the barrow from E.S.E. to W.N.W., the direction of its long axis, was from 150 to 155 feet; and that its breadth at its eastward end was 77 feet; at its highest point, a point very near to the line occupied by the chamber which, as will be seen, gives the chief interest to the barrow, 69 feet ; and at its westward end, 40 feet. The greatest height of the barrow, as at present existing, is about 5 feet. The ground occupied by the barrow falls slightly from the west eastwards.

Note 1. See Anderson, Ancient Remains of Caithness." Mem. Soc. Anth. Lond., vol. i. p. 474, 1865. Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland, 1866-1868.

Note 2. See Thurnam, Crania Britannica," Pl. v. Mem. Soc. Antho Lond., 1865. Archæologia," vol. xlii. p. 209.

In 1867, and previously to the removal of the eastward end, the Rev. David Royce discovered in the barrow a chamber of about 3 feet square, as reported, but probably of even smaller dimensions, with a gallery or passage leading down to it at a point close to its northern boundary line, and 55 feet from its east end. In this chamber were found three skeletons, and in the immediate neighbourhood, either at the same time or in 1874, parts or the whole of five more skeletons, making a total of eight, for whose reception or honour the tumulus had been piled together. The osteological remains, and the surroundings in which they were found, will be described in greater detail further on. The barrow was found to be bounded (irrespective of talus) on its north and south sides by a wall made up of the oolitic flags of the district, laid in horizontal courses; the presence of a wall was not made out at the west, nor, as already stated, at the east end. The wall was about 2 feet 3 inches in height on the south side, but was considerably less on the north, where it was in some places reduced to as few as three or four courses of its constituent flags. The north wall turned inward, to form the passage just mentioned as leading to the skeleton-containing chamber. The walls of the chamber consisted of flagstones of much larger size than those used for forming the boundary walls of the tumulus, the largest being as large as 3 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 4 inches. Some of these stones had been set on edge; some, probably, had served as covering stones. The walls of the chamber thus constituted were set inside the walls of the passage formed by the inward prolongations of the north wall. A reference to the ground plan (Pl. iv. fig. 1) will make these relations clearer. But it will also seem to show that this barrow was broader at the level of the chamber than at that of the extreme eastward end; that, in other words, this barrow was spindle-shaped, instead of being, as is commonly the case in long barrows, club-shaped, or, as in the horned cairns, heart-shaped, with the broader end east- wards. It is true that on measuring the entire mass of talus which the rubble had formed at the east end, the space thus curved was found to be 6 or 7 feet wider than the transverse measurement of the barrow, taken across the chamber. But the plan shows the limitary walls, both north and south, taking a set inwards as they pass eastward from that line. Mr. Royce has suggested that these portions of the limitary walls do not represent the original boundary walls of the barrow for the 55 feet or so from its eastward end, but that the original outer wall ran along a line more or less continuous with that of the walling to the westward of the chamber, and that it has been removed in some unrecorded denudation of the mound. The more internally placed and still persistent walls might be but layers of stone, arranged by the original builders of the barrow for purposes of self-protection against the slipping and sliding of the rubble ; just as we often observed our modern labourers arranging the stones of these barrows while we were exploring them, the same considerations of personal convenience having operated upon neolithic, as they do upon modern, stone-heavers.¹

Note 1. This observation of the practice of modern labourers should put us on our guard against assigning too much importance to, or searching too curiously for, a meaning for every line of walling met with in barrows made of slate-shaped stones. As regards the outer boundary walls even, the mere necessities of the case will account for the greater definiteness which they possess at the Bides and west ends ; though, it is true, they do not account for the peculiar heart-shape which they assume at the east ends of such barrows. For the double curve thus described, the fact that an entrance to a doorway, or gallery, or passage could thus be made with facility, may possibly account. And this contour might, on the well-known principle of " survival," be retained even when, as in the Swell barrows, there was no gallery nor chamber at the east end.

This supposition would remove the stumbling-block constituted by the representation of a long barrow tapering towards its eastward end. The ground plan (Pl. iv. fig. 1), however, represents, in continuous lines, the actual facts, as seen and measured by us ; and a plan of a Barrow with a double wall at its east end, such as the Uley Barrow appears to have been¹, may represent those facts as they were previously to interference. Our ground plan (Pl. iv. fig. 1) shows this conjectural restoration by dotted lines.² The wall of the passage which ran outside the eastward wall of the skeleton-containing chamber, I think, from a comparison of my own notes taken on the spot in 1867 with my observations made in 1874, must originally have been continued southwards as far as the south wall of the barrow, as is indicated by a dotted line in the ground plan. Looking at the barrow in 1867, I noted that a single wall, starting from the south side, " crossed the width of the heap to the opposite side, where the cist ' was ; and a MS. note of Mr. Royce is to very nearly the same effect, viz. that " there was an appearance of walling in the very centre of the barrow, and almost through it in a line with the east end of the cist ; the face of the wall was towards the west, not east." A segment of this wall, about 4 feet long, existed in 1874, in continuation of the passage wall southwards from the chamber it bounded; and another segment, about 2 feet long, took origin opposite this segment, and was prolonged northwards from the southern wall ; but the intervening length, to which the testimony of one of our workmen spoke, as well as my own notes and those of Mr. Royce, had disappeared in 1874. What, however, is certain is, that westward of a line corresponding to the dotted line, c, in the ground plan, the barrow was crossed from north to south by a zone or strip, varying in width from 2 feet 8 inches in the region of the chamber to 3 feet 6 inches in the middle line, and differing from all other segments of the entire length of the barrow in the important particular of lodging eight human skeletons. In the chamber contained in this transverse zone were found, in 1867, parts of three skeletons, two being skeletons of adults, and one a skeleton of a child. At the same time a third adult skull was found immediately to the north, and a fourth immediately to the south of the chamber ; whilst outside the chamber again, but at a greater distance to the south than the skulls, were found two headless bodies, one about the centre of the barrow, west of the supposed central walling, and one more to the south-west." The place of this latter skeleton, which was reported to me, in 1867, as having been the skeleton of a woman, is marked in the plan (Pl. iv. fig. 1) by the word bones ? And the apposition of this note of interrogation, borrowed, like the words given above in inverted commas, from Mr. Royce's notes, make me think that the place assigned to these bones may be a little farther south than it ought to be. Working in 1874 in this transverse zone, we found, at points varying from a spot a little south of the middle line of the barrow, four skeletons, one of an aged woman (described below under label Swell i., 122, 9, 1874 one a male skeleton without a head, and two skeletons of children. Portions of the headless skeleton found by us in 1874, fitted with fragments of bones found and given to me by Mr. Royce in 1867 ; and the later headless skeleton, therefore, may be supposed to be identical with one of the two discovered earlier, which one its discoverers did not think it worth while to remove in its entirety. But what is of consequence is to note, that after a very careful examination of all the bones obtained from the chamber, and from the transverse zone crossing the barrow in the meridian of the chamber in the year 1867 and in the year 1874, we proved that there was no proof in the entire assortment of the existence of more than eight skeletons, three of which had belonged to children, and five to adults. It is well known that many large barrows were erected for the purpose of containing only just such a chamber as the one found in this one, and for lodging only just as few bodics as — or, indeed, often fewer than—the number found here. But it is also well known that many of these long barrows contained more than one, or even two, sepulchral receptacles, chambers," or cists and such an additional receptacle for additional dead may have been constituted by a somewhat enigmatical structure found in 1868, but destroyed before 1874, and represented in fig. 2, Pl. iv., taken from an anastatic drawing of Mr. Royce's. This structure, when discovered April 10th, 1868, during the process of carting away the eastward end of the barrow, was described as being a " diagonal oval chamber, built of small slates, after the manner of the inclosing outer wall," and as being G feet by 4 feet 8 inches in transverse measurements, As the figure shows, it contained no upright flags, and, as the ground plan shows, it was 25 feet nearer to the cast end of the barrow than the chamber already described, and a little to the north of the middle line. When discovered, it contained the following relics: the distal end of the left radius of an adult man ; the mid and ungual phalanges of an adult human subject ; the clavicle of an infant ; the upper molars of an ox; the last lower molar of a sheep; and the phalanx of a small carnivore, probably a weasel, as verified by Professor Owen for Mr. Royce, April 27th, 1868 ; and two flint flakes. Though the fact of this penannular structure having been so far away from the line of the chamber already described makes it improbable that the two bodies represented by the bones just mentioned could have been of the number of eight found to the west of that line, it is of importance to note that there is no osteological impossibility in the way of considering them to have so belonged to them. But in favour of their independent origin there is an additional fact, in the possession by me of a very much worn human temporal bone, which can scarcely have belonged to any of the five adult skeletons already spoken of, but which came from some part of this barrow, it is uncertain which.

Note 1. See Crania Britannica," Pl. v. ; Archæologia," xlii. p. 49, ibique citata.

Note 1. Compare Dr. Anderson's Plan, vii., " Proc, Soc. Ant. Scot. l. c.,

If much is left in comparative uncertainty as to the bones contained in this structure, much more is left in uncertainty as to the interpretation of the structure itself. It is possible that when discovered in 1868 it was even then but the remains of a much larger, or, at least, a more perfect structure; and that larger or more perfect structure may have been either the remains of a heart-shaped or horned east end, or it may have been the remains of a chamber placed much as certain chambers were placed in the chamber-end barrow at Uley, already referred to as described by Dr. Thurnam. But it is also just possible that it may have been simply a stretch of walling erected as a block " to shore up the loose rubble, of which the great bulk of the tumulus was made. Similar structures, it should be said, have been used for sepulchres in Scottish tumuli; and if we were to remove the upright flagging from the chamber to be hereafter described (see Pl. v. fig. 3) as found in the third long barrow examined by us at Swell, that chamber would come to be very like the woodcut here annexed. But it is unprofitable to speculate further upon the real meaning of this lost structure. We tread on much surer ground in dealing with the locality in which the eight more or less perfect skeletons were found. The way in which the skeletons, three in number, were found, in 1867, to be arranged within the chamber, itself a space which was reported to me as being but 3 feet square, and which was in all probability of even less size, was described to me with much precision as follows:—There were in the middle the bones of a child; all round the north side of the cist were coiled the bones of one of the two adults, with the vertebræ in situ, and the legs protruding through a hole in the cist to the outside of it; whilst in the south-east angle of the cist was the other adult, " sitting up," or, as it was otherwise expressed to me upon another occasion, " squatting," with the head resting on the ribs. The covering stones, the existence of which was not noted, as also some of the side stones, must have got displaced, and the chamber had got filled with rubble.

From the chamber there came also to me, in 1867, the jaws of a very young pig, those of a cub-fox, and a part of the occipital bone of a sheep. Some other bones, of ox and of sheep, were sent with them, and may have their presence referred to the practice of feasting at graves. Bones of oxen and sheep were found in various parts of the barrow to the westward of the transverse ossiferous zone; and some of these bones,. from being crumbly in consistence, and, like the human bones from the chamber and its neighbourhood, much stained with the manganic oxide, may be supposed to be of the same age. No other human bones besides those already specified were found in the barrow. Large quantities of ashes and charcoal were found here and there, both at the east and west end of the barrow. The structure, indeed, of the eastward end of the barrow, removed in 1867-1868, was reported to us as having been quite different from that of the west, and this mainly by virtue of a line of deposit of ashes along and on both sides of its centre line. This deposit was said to have consisted of heaps of ashes lying on stones, with stones again laid over them. The heaps of ashes were not in a continuous line, but were, as reported, separated by intervals of 10 feet or so. The ashes themselves were reported as being of a " pinkish, fleshy colour, not at all like the ashes from turf-burning, and as having no grit in them, as field ashes usually have, but feeling soft and greasy when taken between the thumb and finger." Blacker ashes were also found to the north of the central deposit ; and in a deposit from 8 to 10 feet to the north of the central axis were found two serrated flint flakes, stones reddened and calcined, and a splinter of glass. The presence of such an article ag this last shows that the eastward end of the barrow must have been subjected to some comparatively recent disturbance-—at all events, of a kind which would favour the descent of a fragment of such a modern substance as glass. As far as I could judge from excavations made in 1874, the structure of the barrow was, with the exception of the ossiferous zone, and disregarding accidental disturbances made possibly at very different times, essentially one and the same from one end to the other ; the mass of the barrow consisting of slates and rubble arranged in a slant from north and south outer walls respectively, so as to meet in the middle line—as one of the labourers, employed in 1868 in carting them away, expressed it, like the roof of a house." The slanting stones were supported externally by the boundary walls, similar walling being intercalated here and there internally for the same purpose. The converging slopes of flags and rubble had been broken into here and there in the westward half of the barrow; and in exploring one such interruption of its continuity, about 20 feet to the westward of the skeleton-containing chamber, I came upon a few bones of ox, of ancient date, mixed up with a good deal of blackish earth, amongst the rubble. Mr. Royce found a considerable number of such interruptions of the line of the barrow in its westward half, ashes, and bones of lower animals, being found in them. Some of these interruptions of, or altera- tions in, the arrangement of the component elements of the barrow, may have been coeval with it; those at the east end may have been later—I am inclined to think very much later—than that period. In this matter Mr. Royce does not agree with me.

In clearing out the space already spoken of as the transverse zone, containing the ossiferous chamber, and that part of it which ran southwards from the chamber, parts or the wholes of four skeletons were come upon. And the first points, perhaps, to be noted about them are that they were not laid upon the natural soil, as has sometimes been observed to be the case—as, for example, in another Long Barrow in this neighbourhood—but that they always had some slaty rubble interposed between them and it, and that two of these bodies lay to the south of the long axis of the barrow. These facts may seem to some to be an argument in favour of Professor Nillson's view¹ of the bodies having been introduced at successive periods into such tumuli, and of explaining thus those marks of disturbance which have induced other writers to have recourse to the hypothesis that these ancient, like certain modern savages, used their tumuli as ossuaries. The first body found was that of an aged woman, lying (on the right side ? ) in the contracted position, with the vertebræ in situ, about 4 feet 6 inches from the top of the barrow, and from 2 inches to 4 inches from the natural surface of the ground, which was separated from the skeleton by a layer of stones. In front of the legs of the woman, and quite close to them, was the skeleton of a child, in possession of the full milk dentition. Charcoal lay in small quantities all about the bones of the two human subjects, and mixed up with them were the bones of voles. As the trench was carried up towards the chamber, the bones of another child, considerably younger than the former one, were found scattered about in it; and, finally, in the nearer neighbourhood of the chamber was found a considerable part of a headless male skeleton lying on its right side—as there are indications to prove, from the wear of the bones, irrespective of notes taken or not taken at the time, that nearly all the skeletons from this chamber, and its neighbour- hood, were laid. The head of this skeleton, if it was not buried in the headless condition in which we found it, must have lain or been propped against the eastward wall of the zone or trench. The very cramped position which it would thus have occupied may seem to favour the notion of its having been thus headless when first deposited, a notion which the discovery of heads buried separately in other barrows might, in the absence of other considerations, serve to confirm. The patella., tibia, and fibula were in situ , as well as the clavicle, first rib, and the upper end of the humerus of the right side, and some of the dcorsal vertebrae; but much breakage had taken place, and parts of a fibula and tibia of the left side found in relation with these bones by us in 1874, were found to be parts of bones taken up by Mr. Royce in 1867, and given by him to me, showing that much disturbance had taken place then, and render it unsafe to suppose that any of the dislocations of the trunk bones, or, indeed, the separation of the head, may have dated from the time when the body was first put into the barrow. With what was actually seen by us in 1874 must be coupled what was reported to us from 1867, and this went to the effect that two headless bodies were found in this transverse strip of the barrow, west of the central walling, and that one of these lay about the centre of the barrow, and the other further to the south-west; whilst all the skulls, five in number, discovered in 1867 were in, or in the immediate neighbourhood of, the cist. The cist or chamber itself contained three bodies in 1867 un- disturbed-at least to any recognisable extent. The fact that some of the entire number of eight bodies were found at a considerable distance from the skeleton-containing chamber, and that they were found without any of the upright flagging with which those of the other skeletons were placed; and the fact that two skulls, which may be supposed to have belonged to the two headless skeletons, were found placed close to the chamber, one on its north, the other on its south side, seem, when taken together, to indicate that the three skeletons in the chamber were interred at one time, but that time one subsequent to that at which the bodies found headless were interred, and that the skulls of these latter were removed at that time from their natural connections, and placed near the chamber. It is, how- ever, plain that such an explanation as this combines the ossuary theory, which it would employ for the skeletons found undisturbed, with the view of holding that these interments are to be considered the successive interments of a family powerful enough to command the use of a barrow, which view it would employ for the skeletons found at a distance from the chamber. It is possible that it may be right so to combine these views.

Note 1. "Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia," ed. Lubbock, p