HUMAN BONES
BY PROFESSOR T. H. BRYCE, M.D.
THE material for this short report oil human remains found at Newstead Roman Camp consists of a few skulls) and a nearly complete skeleton recovered during the recent excavations, and a skull preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, along with other relics discovered during the formation of the North British Railway by Dr. J. A. Smith in 1846.
The bones are not the product of a regular cemetery, but represent casual interments, which in some cases are not necessarily of an age coeval with the camp at any period of its occupation. Some were found in refuse pits, and certainly date from Roman times; others, however, were found in one or other of the ditches and may belong to a later period.
SKULL No. I., found by Dr. Smith, is a very well-preserved specimen. It is the skull of a male about middle life. The processes and muscular ridges are not strongly marked, and the dimensions are moderate. In its proportions, it approaches the brachycephalic type, the cephalic index being 80, and the length-height index falls below the length-breadth index) that is the breadth is relatively to the length greater than the height. In the norma verticalis the shape of the outline is a short oval, and the zygomatic arches are not seen; the occiput is rounded but not prominent. The glabella and supraorbital ridges are faintly marked; the vault arches gradually and regularly to the bregma; the vertex is flat; the posterior slope is steep but not vertical, and ends in a gently rounded occipital probole.
The face is low and relatively broad; there is no alveolar prognathism, and the jaws are vertical; the mental protuberance is well pronounced, and the angle of the mandible is not everted. The dentition is complete; the crowns of the upper molars are slightly worn, but the lower molars are markedly ground.
SKULL No. II. was found in Pit No. XXIII. It is complete save for the lower jaw, and has special interest in having an injury which was possibly inflicted during the life of the individual, and, if so, must have been his death blow. It is the skull of an adult male about middle life. It is rugged and angular, the glabella and supraorbital ridges are protuberant, the glabella being specially so and overhanging considerably the
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