244
NOTES ON A HUMAN SKULL FOUND AT
WENDON, ESSEX,
With Platt XVIII.
By GUY MAYNARD, Curator of the Saffron Walden Museum.
WITH A REPORT ON THE CRANIUM.
By A. KEITH, M.D., F.R.C.S., Curator, Royal College of Surgeons.
[Read 25th January 1913.]
IN a list of the craniological specimens belonging to the
Saffron Walden Museum, written shortly before 1880,
there occurs the following (page 553 Reg. A.) :
" Skull of an Early British Female, found 22 feet below the surface
and amongst the roots of sedges and sandy gravel (without doubt the bed
of an ancient stream) during the excavations for the Railway in 1864."
The figures 64 in the above date have been added in pencil
at a later period, but there can be little doubt that the exca-
vations were really those of the year mentioned, when the branch
line from Audley End station to Saffron Walden was under
construction. The late Mr. G. E. Roberts gave the following
account of the section in the Anthropological Review, vol. ii., pp.
lxiii., 1864, which is also quoted in the Geological Survey of the
district, N.W. Essex, p. 72.
" In the course of railway works between Audley End and Saffron
Walden it became necessary to divert the course of the River Cam into a
part of the meadow land bounding the stream, which was traditionally
known as 'the old river bed.'
" A cutting about 20 feet deep through this, necessitated for the
foundation of a wide and deep culvert to give passage to the river through
the railway embankment, disclosed the following section :
(Alluvium)
soil .. .. . . . . 1 feet
Clay .. .. . . . . 3 „
Peat . . . . . . . . 12 ,,
Gravel . . . . . . .. ?
" Near the bottom of this peat and at a depth from the surface of 16 feet,
an astonishing quantity of mammalian bones were found . . . .
out of the excavation—an area of not more than 20ft. by 60ft—two cartloads
of large bones were taken away.
" The peat is more properly a blackish clay with numerous fragments
of wood and a few large logs bedded in it. It is everywhere full of fluvatile
shells of species common to the district and contains many naturally-
formed chips, and flakes of flint and a few rolled pebbles."
" The bones which bear artificially made markings are the lower
jaws of a small ox, probably Bos longifrons."
" A single tooth of the badger (?) was found at the same level in the
cutting.