EDITED BY JAMES W. DAVIS, F.S.A., F.G.S., &c.

1893.

ON THE CRANIA AND OTHER HUMAN REMAINS FOUND IN THE BARROW AT HOWE HILL, DUGGLEBY. BY J. G. GARSON, M.D.,

Corresp. Mem. Anthrop. Soc., Paris and Berlin; Lecturer on

Comparative Anatomy, Charing Cross Hospital.

The specimens from Howe Hill Barrow which have been placed in my hands for examination by Mr. J. R. Mortimer, of Driffield, consist of the skulls belonging to the skeletons he has designated in his paper on the exploration of the barrow, by the letters C, D, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, and M, and some of the long bones of the extremities of D, I, and K. (p. 224, pl. viii.) He has also been good enough to furnish me with the measurements of some of the long bones, which have unfortunately not been preserved, belonging to C, D, G, I, L, and M, together with his notes and diagrams relating to the exploration of the barrow, which have been of the greatest assistance to me. The skulls and bones are in a very fragile condition, and many of them are very incomplete, notwithstanding that Mr. Mortimer has bestowed much time and patience in restoring them as far as was possible.

Eight of the specimens belonged to adult males, and two to children of about six and ten years of age respectively. No female's bones appear to have been found in the barrow. According to the usual rule, the description of the specimens I am about to give will only include the adults of the series.

Stature. As is generally the case with human remains from ancient barrows, the stature of the persons whom the skeletons represent can only be determined by calculation from the long bones of the extremities. Of these I have personally only measured the right femur of D, the right and left femora and tibiæ of I, and the two femora, the right humerus, and left tibia of K. The measurements of the other bones which I have given in the "Table of Measurements of the Long Bones," were made by Mr. Mortimer, on whose accuracy in measuring I must entirely rely. It is necessary to state that his measurements were not made with instruments of such precision as were at my disposal for measuring those of the bones submitted to me, and although I have found some differences between his measurements and my own in the bones of D, I, and K, which we have both measured independently, I have little doubt that his measurements of the bones of the other skeletons which I have not measured, are sufficiently correct for comparison with measurements taken before such rigid accuracy as is now required was practised in anthropological research. The measurements made by Mr. Mortimer were supplied to me in inches and parts of inches, but for convenience I have carefully converted them into their equivalent in millimetres. By taking my own and Mr. Mortimer's measurement together I have been able to calculate the probable stature of seven of the adults, no long bones being found with the eighth adult skull (marked J). In doing this I have used the following formulæ given by Topinard in his Eléments d' Anthropologie:Femur Tibia × 100; Femur × 100; Tibia × 100; Humerus x 100; 20.7

49.4

27.1

23.3

As in my opinion the best and most reliable estimate of stature is obtained from the lengths of the femur and tibia added together, I attach most importance to the results yielded by the first of these formulæ. Having the measurements of both these bones in each of the seven skeletons, I have been able to estimate the stature in this way in each instance, and find that the average of the series is 1 m. 661, or 654 inches. Estimated from the length of the femur alone, the average is 11 mm. more, namely 1 m. 672, or about 66 inches, while from the length of the tibia it is 1 m. 575, or about 62 inches.

The tallest individual was that to whom the skeleton D belonged. His stature estimated from the femur and tibia is 1 m. 927, from the femur alone 1 m. 874, and from the tibia 1 m. 905, or 75'9, 738, and 75 inches respectively. It is fortunate that I am able to place before you the right femur of this skeleton and to demonstrate its length to you as 508 mm., otherwise you might think that there was some mistake regarding its measurement, on account of its being so unusually long. The two shortest skeletons are those marked C and L, each of which have an estimated stature from the femur and tibia of 1 m. 555, or 61.2 inches. From these figures it will be seen that there is a considerable degree of variation in this small series. The occurrence of D measuring 9 inches more than the tallest of the other six, without there being any skeleton correspondingly short, gives an erroneous idea of the average stature of the series. I have, therefore, had resource to Mr. Galton's method of arranging the different specimens according to their centesimal grades, by which means we get rid of the disturbing effects of the extremes at each end of the series, and so obtain the mean of the group. When treated in this way the actual mean stature of the series is 1 m. 628 (64·1 inches). For the information of those who are unacquainted with this method of dealing with statistics, I may state that at the 25th centesimal grade the stature is 1 m. 564 (616 inches), the 50th, 1 m. 616, and at the 75th, 1 m. 692 (66.6 inches); the value of Q, therefore, is 64 mm., giving a corrected mean for the series of 1 m. 628. This height indicates as nearly as possible, I consider, the mean stature of the persons represented by the skeletons we have to deal with. It is considerably lower than the mean stature of the male population of this country at the present time, which, at prime of life between the ages of 23 and 51, is 1 m. 715 (67.5 inches), according to the extensive observations of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association* (See Reports for 1882). The tibiofemoral index, which shows the relative length of the tibia to that of the femur, varies from 777 in G and M to 87'4 in D, and averages in the whole series 81.1, but excluding D, in which the index is very

When these observations, as tabulated, are treated by Mr. Galton's method of centesimal grades, the corrected mean stature is 1 m. 703 (67 inches).

high, it averages 80 in the six other skeletons, which is almost the same as that given by Broca, Topinard, and Rollet for Europeans. Although in persons of tall stature Topinard found that the index is somewhat higher than in short persons (averaging 811 in males with statures between 1 m. 70 and 2 m. 06, and 79.7 in those with statures varying from 1 m. 43 to 1 m. 60) the index is so high in D as to lead us to suspect that some error has occurred in recording the length of the tibia in that skeleton.

The index of Platycnemism, or the relation between the transverse breadth of the tibia to its antero-posterior diameter was ascertained only in the two specimens K and I which were measured by me; in the former it is 649, and in the latter 67·6, giving an average of 663 for the two specimens. The measurements for this index were taken by Busk's method about 4 cm. below the nutrient foramen of the bone. The average index in English people is 73, so that the specimens from Howe Hill Barrow, are markedly platycnemic as compared with the existing inhabitants.

To trace the relations of the people represented by these skeletons, it is necessary to study, as far as materials will permit, the characters and dimensions of those of the earlier races who have successively inhabited various parts of England. For this purpose, I have calculated the stature of all the Barrow specimens of adult males described in the "Crania Britannica" by Dr. Barnard Davis. As, however, he only gives the dimensions of the femur, I have only been able to do so from it, and not from the femur and tibia, as I would have preferred to do. The results are as follows:-The average stature of eight Long Barrow skeletons is 1 m. 698 (66-8 inches), the average length of the femur being 460 mm., while that of twelve Round Barrow skeletons is 1 m. 793 (70-6 inches).

Between the average stature, estimated from the femur, of the Howe Hill series, which I have previously stated, is 1 m. 672, and that of the Long Barrow specimens, the difference is only 26 mm. ; while between the former and Round Barrow series it is 118 mm. It is therefore clear that the skeletons from Howe Hill correspond very closely to Dr. Barnard Davis's Long Barrow series, which, I may mention, includes specimens from Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Gloucester

4

shire and Wiltshire, from which counties also the Round Barrow specimens were likewise obtained. The tallest Long Barrow skeleton in the "Crania Britannica" series has an estimated stature of 1m. 874, his femur being 508 mm. long, which is exactly the same length as the longest femur from Howe Hill; the shortest man has an estimated stature of 1 m. 546, which is also exactly the same as that of the shortest skeleton from Howe Hill. The range of variation in stature of both series is practically the same; in both there is a disturbing element owing to the presence of an usually tall individual, which raises the average stature of each group to a figure higher than it should be. To get at the true mean stature of the groups, I have again employed Mr. Galton's graphic method, which shows that the stature at the 25th and 75th centesimal grades is respectively 1 m. 585, and 1 m 715 in the Howe Hill specimens, and 1 m 652, and 1 m. 730 in the Long Barrow series, the respective values of Q, (ie., half the difference between the statures at each of these two grades), are 65 and 39 mm., giving to the former series a corrected mean stature at the 50th grade of 1 m. 650, and the latter of 1 m. 691, the observed mean of the former being 1 m. 653, and of the latter 1 m. 702.

On the other hand, the tallest Round Barrow skeleton in the "Crania Britannica" has an estimated stature of 1 m. 920, (75'6 inches), and the shortest of 1 m. 686 (66.3 inches) while the rest of the series range themselves regularly between these extremes.

In the Memoirs of the Anthropological Society of London, Vol. III, p. 41, Dr. Thurnam gives the length of the femur of twenty-five males from Long Barrows as 457 mm. which gives an estimated stature of 1 m. 686, while the femur in twenty-seven males from Round Barrows averaged 477 5 which gives an average stature in them of 1 m. 761.

The Howe Hill specimens may also be compared with skeletons obtained by General Pitt Rivers, from Rotherley, Woodcuts, and Winklebury. The medium stature of eleven skeletons found at Rotherley was 1 m. 562 (61.5 inches), and of seven from Woodcuts which were rather more mixed in type, 1 m. 644 (64.7 inches).

The general conformation of the skulls obtained from these two