that Dupertuis believed that the survey ‘would go a long way towards clearing up the racial problems of Europe’. The reasons given for the expression of this eugenic ideal were as follows:
Ireland being more or less an isolated country, was probably not so mixed racially as Continental countries, and he [Dupertuis] felt that in certain parts of this country the descendants of more or less pure racial types which came in from across the waters would be found. He hoped to be able, at the end of the survey, to answer such questions as who were the Celts, and what was their racial type or types, and what element in the present day population represented the descendants of the earliest inhabitants of this island and just where they were to be found today.91
Dupertuis spent a lot of time in many districts of Ireland and grants were put at his disposal by the Irish Free State Government to help him during the later stages of his work. He already had two years of experience in anthropometry at the Century of Progress International Exposition, 1933–4, in Chicago, where he organised the Harvard Anthropometric Laboratory, which measured and observed visitors to the fair. After the first year of anthropometric work in Ireland Dupertuis returned to America. The following year he came back to Ireland accompanied by his wife, Helen Dawson. She worked as his recorder and collaborator in the Irish survey. She held a National Research Council Fellowship in Anthropology and used this to study Irish women of the West Coast. She collected an anthropometric sample of some 1,800 women for analysis in an effort to establish the characteristics of the Celtic race.92
Hooton acknowledged that Seosamh Ó Néill, Secretary of the Department of Education for the Irish Free State was very cooperative with the physical survey of the Harvard Mission. Ó Néill was instrumental in coaxing members of his and other government departments to submit themselves to an anthropometric examination. He was also responsible for administrating the grant of £40 given by the Government for the work towards defraying of expenses incurred during the collection of data.93 De Valera not only manifested keen interest in the anthropometric survey, but also offered helpful suggestions, and Sir Richard Dawson Bates, the Home Secretary for Northern Ireland, also gave his official sanction to the work there.94 Dupertuis interviewed Major-General W.R.E. Murphy, the Deputy Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, who agreed to provide letters of introduction to the superintendents of the Civic Guard in various parts of the country. This was approved by the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, Colonel Éamon Broy. The Gardaí therefore became, ‘active co-workers in the gathering of anthropometric material’. The cooperation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary of Northern Ireland was also acquired and their members helped in collecting or facilitating the collection of anthropometric data. Bishops and parish priests around the country were useful to the survey and ‘helped round up subjects’ for examination.95
Measuring Celtic Skulls
To ascertain the race to which skulls recovered during archaeological excavations belonged, the Harvard Mission anthropologists employed the discredited nineteenth-century technique of mustard seed measurement. This technique, used to assess cranial capacity, was designed by a physician from Philadelphia, Samuel George Morton (who died in 1851), to find out the average size of human brains. Morton attempted to rank races according to the sizes of their brains. Stephen Jay Gould describes Morton’s technique and his abandonment of it in his book The Mismeasure of Man:
He [Morton] filled the cranial cavity with sifted white mustard seed, poured the seed back into a graduated cylinder and read the skulls’ volume in cubic inches. Later on, he became dissatisfied with mustard seed because he could not obtain consistent results. The seeds did not pack well, for they were too light and still varied too much in size, despite sieving. Re-measurements of single skulls might differ by more than 5 per cent, or 4 cubic inches. Consequently, he switched to one-eighth-inch-diameter lead shot ‘of the size called BB’ and achieved consistent results that never varied by more than a single cubic inch for the same skull.96
The physical anthropological examinations conducted by the Harvard team on skeletons from archaeological sites showed whether the skeletons had large brow ridges, pronounced prognathism or very long arms. Simian-type stereotyping of the Irish Celt, with negroid features, had been popular in American and British newspapers published in the nineteenth century.97 Scientific results obtained by the Harvard academics rivalled these imaginative and discriminatory depictions.
Hooton made helpful suggestions with regard to the reconstruction of the skeletons at the Bronze Age cemetery-cairn at Knockast in County Westmeath, excavated by the Harvard archaeologists, and collaborated with them in the preparation of the site report. Aleš Hrdlička also assisted in the examination of the bones.98 Hrdlička, a physical anthropologist, served on the anthropometric sub-committee of the American Eugenics Society (AES) with Hooton. They were both also on the Committee of the Negro with the leading American eugenicist Charles Davenport. This committee was established in 1926 by the American Association of Physical Anthropology and the National Research Council. Classifications of skulls at Knockast were deemed by the Harvard team to be significant as a large skull contained a brain which ‘from point of size is well above the average for modern Europeans’.99 The skull was described as dolichocephalic and orthognathous and the cranial capacity was established using mustard seed measurement.100 The archaeologists interpreted some skeletons at Knockast to be of a type which ‘one would normally expect on the basis of the present data with respect to Bronze Age man in Ireland’ a type which had been identified by Professor Shea of University College Galway. Professor Shea compared this type with that of the ‘short-cist people of Scotland’.101 The Harvard archaeologists believed that they could identify different races of people in the archaeological record based on physical anthropology, which they associated with differentiated cultural activities. For example, the ‘small cremating people’ identified at Knockast were deemed to represent a different physical type to those contained in the inhumation burials at the site.102 It was extrapolated from this that they represented an intrusive element at Knockast. The cairn was considered to have affinities with similar Late Bronze Age types in Britain. The conclusion was made that ‘the Late Bronze Age in Ireland must be considered intrusive, and Knockast the result of these new elements mingling with indigenous Bronze Age culture’.103
The idea that the cremating people were a different race, based largely on their different funerary practices, was contradicted by other evidence from Knockast where cremation and inhumation were for a time at least, contemporary rites. Bones from a cremated burial of a young woman were mixed with the skeleton of a child and some cremated remains were found under the child’s skull.104 These difficulties associated with correlating racial types with particular cultural assemblages or practices were acknowledged by the excavators.105 But, despite the limitations, much interesting information from an archaeological viewpoint was gleaned from physical anthropology about the lifestyle and health of the inhabitants of the site. For example, one male individual at Knockast had been badly crippled by arthritis and had recovered from a bad ear infection, leading Hooton to muse that ‘his recuperative powers must have been extraordinary’. There was also evidence for right-handedness and squatting.106 Sir Arthur Keith wrote about the skeleton found in the flexed position in the cairn at Knockast that it ‘may have Round Barrow (or beaker) blood in him’.107 The concept of equating a particular race with a specific artefact, pottery type, or monument type was popular in 1930s archaeological discourse.
Most of the human remains found in the Harvard excavations were sent to America for examination by physical anthropologists. A huge survey of skeletal remains was undertaken by the Harvard Mission at Gallen Priory, County Offaly in 1934 and 1935. T.D. Kendrick108 from the British Museum directed the excavation. He was assisted by Michael V. Duignan109 of the National Museum and the site was excavated under the Unemployment Schemes. Kendrick had invited the Harvard anthropologists to examine the site as ‘such quantities came to light that he felt the anthropological opportunities should not be wasted’.110 Gallen Priory was included in Harold G. Leask’s report on the more important archaeological results obtained from the Unemployment Schemes in 1935.111 Hooton along with William White Howells112 undertook the examination of the skeletons. They were both members of the Anthropometry sub-committee
