Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/255

Rh —totally different from the ceramic of the Bronze Age.

Tacitus informs us that he identified the Silures, a people then occupying South Wales, as Iberians, on account of their swarthy complexion and curly hair. The inference that the Silures were the descendants of the long-headed British immigrants is not unreasonable, more especially as by that time the eastern parts of Britain had been taken possession of by successive waves of Gaulish and Belgic people from the Continent, thus causing the earlier inhabitants to recede more and more westwards. If this be so, it follows that the long-headed man of the chambered cairns of Britain and Ireland had a swarthy complexion with dark hair and eyes, like so many people still living on the more secluded and out-of-the-way portions of the British Isles.

The brachycephalic invaders of Britain are described as having light hair and a fair complexion, but there is no archæological evidence to justify this assertion. They buried their dead in short cists and round barrows and had a knowledge of bronze. According to the Hon. John Abercromby (A Study of the Bronze Age Pottery, 1912) they hailed from the Rhine district, and introduced the type of sepulchral ceramic known as the Beaker, or drinking-cup. This vessel was almost invariably deposited beside the body, and is supposed to have contained