HER 3807 DESCRIPTION:-

1879 - The Iron Age burials, and their finds, are fully described in a contemporary article describing a lecture made to members of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club in 1881. The details of the finds are made, though the nature and the exact location of the finds is not specifically mentioned with only general dimensions given in the account. {Source Work 3036.}

An Iron Age cemetery at the side of the road between Birdlip and Crickley was discovered in 1879, when a quarryman digging stone found three skeletons buried in stone cists {Source Work 1695}, apparently extended with heads to the east in Iron Age 'C' manner. {Source Work 3448.}

No remains were found with the outermost skeletons, those of adult males, but the centre burial of a woman was accompanied by grave goods which included the famous "Birdlip" mirror, a silver gilt fibula and two bronze bowls. The large bowl was placed over the face of the corpse {Source Work 1695}, and the other may have been a water-clock. {Source Work 4020.}

Another interment was later found lying in a shallow grave about 20yds (18m) away {Source Work 2971}. It lay with the head to the east, not in a cist {Source Work 9} and was accompanied by an iron sword and the bronze rim and side plates of a bucket, the position of which suggests it was buried bottom up covering the face of the corpse. The date of this discovery is given as 1879 {Source Work 11}, within a few days of the discovery of the woman's remains {Source Work 3036} and 1883 {Source Work 2971.}

The burials are dated to between BC50 and AD47 by Green, who believes the gilt brooch to be of the Aylesford type of the 2nd half of the last century BC. {Source Work 3448.}

Fox however believes the burial group to be of cAD10. He dates the mirror to between AD10 and AD25, and believes the brooch to be a Dubonnic development of the Aylesford type (similar to the continental "Augenfibeln") of a date consistent with that of the mirror. {Source Work 103.} {Source Work 862.}

1951-1953 - A summary of the Birdlip mirror burials are given in a centenary review for the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club in 1951. It is thought that these burials date to the earlier part of the 1st century AD. {Source Work 2970.}

This late Iron Age inhumation cemetery is unique in the Cotswolds. The triple burial, which contained the woman's skeleton with the bronze mirror, may have been under a barrow. The 'Celtic' vitreous-patterned beads obtained by Baddeley in 1902 have proved to be Czechoslovakian of the 19th century. {Source Work 862.}

The site lies in an area of scrub covered quarry upcast. {Source Work 862.}

Burials accompanied by grave goods known from the small cemetery at Burrow Wake, Birdlip, where the decorated mirror and other metal objects accompanying a female skeleton imply a princely caste whose existence could hardly be inferred from other small finds in the area (pxxvii & xxix). Imprecise and varying accounts refer to four burials. Three found together, possibly under a cairn, are said to have been in cists lined and covered with limestone flags. The group comprised a female with an ornamented bronze mirror (the 'Birdlip mirror'), two bronze bowls, an iron knife-handle with a bronze bull's-head terminal, a silver-gilt fibula datable within the early C1, a bracelet, rings, tweezers and other bronze objects, and beads from a necklace of amber, marble and shale. With her were two unaccompanied skeletons, thought to be male. The fourth skeleton, found near by in a shallow grave, was accompanied by the remains of a bronze-mounted wooden bucket and an iron weapon with a blade 13in (0.33m) long, perhaps a dagger. Apart from the iron weapon, these grave-goods are in Gloucester City Museum. Part of gold torque, found in the area in 1947 and now lost, may have come from a fifth grave.

A detailed reconsideration of the evidence relating to the cemetery was published in 1982. {Source Work 1143.}