THE IRON AGE

209

had formed, in their earlier home, the habit of tilling this in strips with deep ploughs drawn by eight oxen. The Kelts, whose agriculture was more cursory in character, preferred the uplands already made treeless by nature, and cultivated in square fields. They remained for the most part on territory frequented by the Bronze Age and Neolithic men be­fore them. The Saxons, who liked forests as well as lowlands, cleared the marshes and river valleys of trees, and drained and planted them. Ow­ing to this fundamental difference in methods of agriculture, the two peo­ples overlapped little at first, and the Saxons and Britons occupied adjoin­ing territories in many parts of England for several centuries until at length the Saxon social and political domination submerged the language and culture of the earlier inhabitants beneath its own pattern.

The Anglo-Saxon skeletons which have been described earlier are de­rived from the graves of the heathen period, from the fifth to the end of the ninth centuries. The skulls from these graves ⁸² make a striking contrast to the Keltic Iron Age type which preceded them. While the Iron Age forehead is extremely sloping, that of the Anglo-Saxon skulls is rather steep and high, and the skulls which possess mandibles show that the Anglo-Saxon type was deep jawed, with a great distance from lower tooth line to chin and with a long, sloping ascending ramus. The cranium as a whole is steep sided with a well-rounded occiput, and fre­quently lambdoidally flattened.⁸³ The browridges are moderate to heavy. The nasal bones are highly arched, with often a considerable nasion de­pression. Muscularity of a pronounced character is indicated by deep pits and ridges on the long bones, which are thick and heavy. Compared with the Iron Age people, the Saxons were large bodied, and their more con­siderable body weight is correlated with a larger braincase. The mean stature of various series of Anglo-Saxons ranges from 167-172 cm.⁸⁴ and the total mean equals 170 or 171 cm.

Although there was a difference in the localities from which various groups of Anglo-Saxons came, little regional difference is manifest in the series from England. The Jutes who settled in Kent, and who came from the peninsula of Jutland, seem larger faced than the Saxons themselves, but the difference is actually slight.⁸⁵ In the total Saxon group studied

80. Morant, Biometrika, vol. 18, 1926, pp. 56-98.

Brash, J. C., Layard, D., and Young, M., Biometrika, vol. 27, 1935, pp. 388-408.

80. Lambdoid flattening is a characteristic common to Neanderthal and Upper Palaeolithic man, but rare in the exclusively Mediterranean group.

81. Calculated from a number of series, involving over 120 adult males. Sources:

Beddoe, J., JRAI, vol. 19, 1889, pp. 2-11.

Duckworth, W. L. H., PCAS, vol. 27, 1926, pp. 36-42.

Hooton, E. A., JRAI, vol. 64, 1915, pp. 92-130.

Humphreys, Ryland, Barnard, etc., Archaeologia, vol. 73, 1923, pp. 89-116.

Mortimer, J. R., Man, vol. 9, 1909, pp. 35-36. ⁸⁶ Morant, loc. cit.