Page:Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.djvu/258

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244
Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.

stated.[1] The further point that skulls from Saxon graves in Wessex show a tendency to prognathism has been fully dealt with in the chapter on settlers from the Baltic coasts.[2] Fifteen skulls from the Saxon burial-ground at Winklebury, on the border of Wilts and Dorset, which was explored by General Pitt Rivers, were found to present differences in shape, showing that the interments could not have been those of people of homogeneous ethnological characters. Beddoe examined these skulls,[3] and found six to be elliptic, four ovo-elliptic, four ovoid, and one oblong-ovate. Some were thus much broader than the others, and he points out in his report that the skull which he finds to be oblong-ovate is the same as that called Sarmatic by the Continental anthropologist Van Hölder. The word Sarmatic was an older name for the Slavic race; and the Wends, who have been shown by other evidence to have settled among other tribal people in Wilts and Dorset, were Slavs.

  1. Chap. VII., p. 117.
  2. Chap. VIII., p. 129.
  3. Journal Anthrop. Inst., xix. 5.