shown the survival on a large scale of blondes in Dorset and Wilts. The valley of the Stour as far north as Somerset is marked at the present day by blondes. Some of the Baltic races, such as the Lithuanians, are as fair as Scandinavians. The recorded facts and existing ethnological characters evidently support the conclusion that Wessex was originally occupied by a mixed population.
The difference in the village shapes is of some interest. In the north of Wiltshire the isolated homesteads are more common than in the valleys of the Wiley, Avon, and Nadder, and the isolated homestead was the Celtic arrangement. The collected homesteads of South Wiltshire may be compared with those between the Elbe and the Weser—i.e., in the old Saxon country; and, allowing for variations, also with the collected homesteads east of the Elbe—i.e., in the former Wendish country. The villages of collected homesteads in England had large areas of open commonable land, including the cultivated fields, and it is of interest to note that, as late as a century ago, half the area of Berkshire was open land, and more than half of Wiltshire.[1]
The evidence which the features of the skulls from burial-places supply concerning the introduction of more than one race into Wessex has already been given, and there is further evidence of the same kind supporting the settlement in Dorset of people of Slavonic origin.
Among the skulls in West Saxon graves a small minority are of the broad-headed type, having an average cephalic index of 81, whilst the majority are long-headed, with an index of about 76. The reasons for concluding that this was due to the introduction of people of a broad-headed race with the Anglo-Saxon settlers, rather than to a fusion of the descendants of the remote Round Barrow men with Saxon immigrants, have already been
- ↑ Maine, Sir H., ‘Village Communities in the East and West,’ pp. 88, 89.
