Two Early Iron Age burials are recorded as having been discovered in Staffordshire, one at Alstonfield, the other at Barlaston. The barrow near Alstonfield, called Steep Lowe,[120] was composed of loose stones, and was 50 feet in diameter, and 15 feet high. The Iron Age interment was a secondary one, the tumulus having been made originally in the Bronze or Stone Age. The body was laid on its back; and amongst the grave-goods were a spear-head, a lance-head, and a knife (all of iron), some fragments of a highly ornamented drinking-cup, a stud of amber, and Roman coins of Constantine and Tetricus. The burial at Barlaston,[121] unlike the one just described, was not in a mound, but in a grave, 7 feet long by 2 feet wide, by 1 foot 3 inches deep, cut in the solid red sandstone rock. With the body were associated a beautifully ornamented flat bronze ring of Late-Celtic character; three circular, enamelled discs of the type found in the barrow on Middleton Moor; some fragments of a bronze bowl, which Mr. Ll. Jewitt erroneously conjectured to have formed portions of a helmet; and blades of an iron sword and knife. [119] _Ten Years’ Diggings_, p. 28. [120] Bateman’s _Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire_, p. 76. [121] Ll. Jewitt’s _Grave-Mounds and their Contents_, p. 258; and _Archæologia_, vol. lvi., p. 44. [Illustration: BRONZE MIRROR FROM BIRDLIP, GLOUCESTERSHIRE; NOW IN THE GLOUCESTER MUSEUM _R. W. Dugdale photo._] No discovery of sepulchral remains belonging to the Late-Celtic period surpasses in interest that made in 1879, between Birdlip[122] and Crickley, on the Cotteswold Hills, seven miles south-east of Gloucester, both on account of the completeness of the series of objects buried with the deceased, and the extreme beauty of some of them as works of art. Whilst repairing the road, Joseph Barnfield unearthed three skeletons interred with the feet to the south, in graves protected by thin slabs of stone placed on edge. The central skeleton was that of a female, and those on each side males. The following grave-goods were associated with the female: a bronze bowl (laid on the face of the deceased); a silver fibula plated with gold; a necklace consisting of thirteen amber beads, two jet beads, and one marble bead; a tubular brass armlet; a brass key-handle; a bronze knife-handle ornamented with a beast’s head, having small knobs at the ends of the horns; and last, but not least, a superb bronze mirror. Another very similar find of skeletons in graves formed of stones placed on edge was made in 1833 at Trelan Bahow,[123] in the parish of St. Keverne, in Cornwall, ten miles south-east of Helston. With one of the skeletons was a beautiful bronze mirror, now in the British Museum.[122] See John Bellows, in _Trans. of Bristol and Gloucestershire Archæol. Soc._, vol. v., p. 137. The objects found are now in the Gloucester Museum. [123] See J. Jope Rodgers in _Archæol. Journ._, vol. xxx., p. 267.