Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/251

Rh slab placed in front converted the recess into an ossuary. The skeletons were pronounced by Pruner-Bey to belong to a Mongoloid race. The skulls were apparently of a mixed character—more brachycephalic than dolichocephalic; but only two, a male and a female, were sufficiently entire to yield correct anatomical details. At the entrance to the cave, and inside it, were found some twenty worked flints, perforated pendants of fluorine, many shells from Eocene formations (perforated), two plaques of sandstone with incised ornamentation and a globular vessel, or urn, restored from fragments of coarse pottery. M. Dupont, probably influenced by Lartet's opinion of the analogous sepulchral cavern of Aurignac, regarded the Trou du Frontal as a cemetery of the Palæolithic hunters of the Reindeer period. But, because of the brachycephalism of the skulls, the pottery and the associated relics, it is now generally believed to have belonged to the early Neolithic Age. The point to be noted here is that already two races are represented in the community who owned this cemetery.

One of the most useful contributions to prehistoric craniology is a statistical list of the Neolithic crania of Gaul drawn up in 1895 by Philippe Salmon. In looking into the details of these tabulated crania some striking facts are brought out. Thus there are some stations, especially among sepulchral caverns, which contained only dolichocephalic skulls.