(MacMaster 2001: ch. 3). An increasing number of scholars defended the
thesis that diVerent groups of people had separate origins. Among the poly-
genists Samuel G. Morton (1799–1851), the author of bothCrania Americana
(1839) andCrania Aegyptica(1844), should be mentioned.
Racist overtones were also expressed by the polygenist Robert Knox (1791–
1862), who considered that the Saxon or Scandinavian race was destined for
dominance, and that the Saxons’ principal enemies were the Celts, among
whom he included the Irish Celts whom he deWned as inferior colonial
subjects (Biddiss 1976: 249; Morse 1999: 11). In France craniology was
followed and developed by the polygenist Paul Broca (1824–80), his Parisian
school and his association, the Socie ́te ́d’anthropologie de Paris (1858) (Ban-
ton 1987; Blanckaert 2001). He distinguished two main races in French
prehistory:
the monuments alleged to be Celtic twenty years ago are of two diVerent periods: the
stone age on one hand, and the bronze age on the other. Yet others, even more recent,
contain some iron objects. Comparative studies... have shown that the primary
inhabitants of Europe belonged to the stone age, while the use of bronze was
introduced by more civilized man, probably of Asiatic origin... The Celtic period
begins with the bronze age; the stone age period is pre-Celtic...
and added:
The Celts of History are a confederation of peoples in Central Gaul. The Celts of
Linguistics are the people who have spoken and are still speaking the so-called Celtic
languages. The Celts of Archaeology are the people who inaugurated the bronze age in
Europe. The Celts of CraniologyWnally, are the people who brought dolichocephaly to
the native brachycephalic European population, according to Retzius; whereas accord-
ing to Thurnman they are, on the contrary, the people who brought brachycephaly to
the native dolichocephalic British population.
(Broca 1864 in Schiller 1979: 145–6).Following in the steps of the Parisian society, the Anthropological Society of
London was organized by James Hunt in 1862. The social tensions between
this and the Ethnological Association have been described by Stocking (1971).
In Germany the anatomist Alexander Ecker (1816–87) argued in 1865 that the
long skulls found in post-Roman cemeteries represented Germanic types,
whom he thought were also present in prehistory (Wiwjorra 1996: 170).
The German anatomist, Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), would become the
principal representative of this trend (Poliakov 1996 (1971): 264).
Whether made by a polygenist or not, the distinction between dolicho-
cephalic and brachycephalic (i.e., long and short) skulls created by Retzius
became extremely popular for decades to come. It was used by John Grattan,
a member of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society who,
348 National Archaeology in Europe