The entrance was completely blocked up with red earth and loose stones, the latter, apparently, having been placed there by design ([Figs. 36], [37]). The inside of the cave was filled with red earth and sand to within about a foot of the roof. The remains were found, for the most part, on or near the top; but in some cases they were deep down. One human skull, for example, was found six inches only above the rocky floor. The human bones were associated with those of the animals of which a list has been given, and occurred in little confused heaps. One human femur was in a perpendicular position. The account of the continuation of the digging is given almost in the words of Mrs. Lloyd. On the second day, after an hour’s work, a human skull was found near the roof of the cave, resting on a femur; then eleven feet explored brought to light a large quantity of human bones, including nine femurs. The third and fourth days were devoted to clearing out the cave ([Fig. 36]–[7] B) up to this point, and to excavating about four feet further in, or fifteen from the entrance. During the work two teeth of a horse were found, resting on the floor near the entrance, and nine more about ten feet within the cave; also a boar’s tusk of remarkable size, and close by a mussel and cockle-shell, and valve of Mya truncata, along with a quantity of human and other bones; including five skulls, more or less perfect, and many fragments. All these skulls were found between the tenth and fifteenth feet from the entrance. During the fifth and sixth days, the work was superintended by Mr. Reid, who entirely cleared the cave for about thirteen feet further: the first eight feet yielded a small quantity of human and other bones, including the perfect skull of a marten-cat and the incisor of a wild boar. The only implement found in the cave, a broken flint flake, occurred here, and a nearly perfect human skull, lying face downwards, with the pelvis adhering to one side. The last five feet furnished only two bones, both of the short-horned ox. The end of the cave was composed of unproductive grey clay. ([Figs. 36]–[7] C.)
Fig. 37.—Plan of Cave at Perthi-Chwareu.
Small fragments of charcoal occurred throughout the cave, and a great many rounded pebbles from the boulder clay of the neighbourhood.
The human remains belong for the most part to very young or adolescent individuals, from the small infant to youths of twenty-one. Some, however, belong to men in the prime of life. All the teeth that had been used were ground perfectly flat. The skulls belong to that type which Professor Huxley terms the “river-bed skull.” Some of the tibiæ present the peculiar flattening parallel to the median line, which Professor Busk denotes by the term platycnemic, and some of the femora were traversed by a largely developed and prominent linea aspera; but these peculiarities were not seen on all the femora and tibiæ, and cannot therefore be considered characteristic of race, but most probably of sex. They were not presented by any of the younger bones.
All the human remains had undoubtedly been buried in the cave, since the bones were in the main perfect, or only broken by the large stones which had subsequently fallen from the roof. From the juxtaposition of one skull to a pelvis, and the vertical position of one of the femora, as well as the fact that the bones lay in confused heaps, it is clear that the corpses had been buried in the contracted posture, as is usually the case in neolithic interments. And since the area was insufficient for the accommodation of so many bodies at one time, it is certain that the cave had been used as a cemetery at different times. The stones blocking up the entrance were probably placed as a barrier against the inroads of wild beasts.
These remains are the first in this country which present the peculiar character of platycnemism, noticed by Professor Busk and Dr. Falconer in human remains in the caves of Gibraltar, and by Dr. Broca in some of those from the dolmens of France, and subsequently in the celebrated skeletons found in the cave of Cro-magnon. I have also observed the same peculiar flattening of the tibia in the only fragment of human bone obtained by Mr. Foote, in the Lateritic deposits of the eastern coast of Southern India, along with the stone implements figured in the Norwich Volume of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology (1868, p. 224).
The remains of the animals associated with the human bones belong to the same species as those mentioned above from the débris of a refuse-heap, and are in a similar broken and split condition. They may have been deposited at the same time as the human skeletons, but, from the fact that some of them are gnawed by dogs, it is most probable that they were accumulated while the cave was used as a dwelling. If the bodies were placed on an old floor of occupation, and afterwards disturbed by rabbits and badgers, the remains would be mingled together as they were found to be mingled. The contents had evidently been disturbed by the burrowing of all these animals.
Subsequently we discovered and explored no less than four other sepulchral caves, within a few hundred yards of the refuse-heap, in which the corpses had been buried in the same crouching posture. From one on the farm of Rhosdigre we obtained a perfect celt of polished greenstone which had never been used ([Fig. 38]), together with several flint flakes, and numerous fragments of pottery, rude, black inside, hand-made, and containing in their substance small fragments of limestone.
Similar potsherds are preserved in the Oxford Museum, from the superficial deposits of the caves of Gailenreuth and Kuhlock, and I have observed them also among the remains from Kent’s Hole. The celt was most probably, from its unworn condition, buried with the dead, and it stamps the neolithic age of the interments of the whole group.