vol. xx. (i) LATE CELTIC FINDS OF 1879 23 
label (but now correctly re-labelled) as Romano-British from 
Bircllip, having formed part of the possessions of the late 
Mr. Sawyer. It would seem that the latter gentleman received 
it long years ago from Dr. Cook, formerly of that town (cf. 
Cheltenham Examiner, November 7th, 1883), together with a 
damaged skull from a totally different, and later, interment, 
found in the latter year. The last-mentioned skull was then 
found at a distance of only some twenty or more yards from the 
former one, but lying in a shallow grave, and at a very different 
level, moreover, accompanied bv iron objects and the bronze 
bucculce, or bronze check-pieces of a Roman helmet. The main 
corroborative evidence of the identity of the larger skull with 
that described in the 1879 find, besides Mr. Sawyer’s description 
of it, lies in the exceptional preservation thereof (as remarked at 
the time of discovery), but also in the peculiar blue stain, due 
to contact with a bronze object, occurring upon the left frontal 
bone, about two inches above the occiput. De facto, the 
bronze bowl at the time of the discovery was found lying 
actually on the face of this skull, where, no doubt, it had been 
placed at burial. 
The teeth of the lower jaw are actually complete, while 
eight of them are now missing from the upper. They are of 
exceptional whiteness, and bear no traces of decay or abscess, 
though all are distinctly ground-down, in part due, perhaps, to 
a practice of eating hard foods, or, of permitting more sand 
than we should tolerate to mix with their eatables, and in part 
to advancing years. The ossification of the coronal and sagittal 
sutures is so complete that these are in places barely traceable. 
We may incline, therefore, to the conclusion that the individual 
was an elderly lady, and a personage of no small importance. 
We may also infer that the two male skeletons found buried in 
a line with her need not have been (as then surmised) her 
husbands, or slaves, but quite possibly were her father and her 
son — the one at her head, and the latter at her feet. All lay 
(G. B. Witts) in one direct east-to-west line, 1 and were enclosed 
and protected by several thin slabs of white-washed stone 
forming a fence, or extended cist, around them. The length of 
1 John Bellows, Trans. Brist. and Gloucs. Arch. Soc., v. 137, says North to South. Cf. 
Proceedings Cheltenham Nat. Science Soc., Nov., 1683. 
