A "truly remarkable" early medieval ring thought to be at least 1,000 years old has been unearthed in Scotland.
The intricately designed ring was found at the site of Burghead fort in the council area of Moray in the northeast of the country. The site was once home to a large promontory fort that served as a power center of the Picts—an ancient people who lived in what is now Scotland—between the 6th and 10th centuries A.D.
The rare ring, which came to light during an excavation led by the University of Aberdeen (UA), Scotland, is kite-shaped and features a piece of red glass-like material embedded in its center (known as a garnet). It is now in the hands of the National Museum of Scotland's post-excavation service and will be the subject of analysis.
The artifact was uncovered by dig volunteer John Ralph, a former engineer and graduate of UA, on the last day of the two-week-long excavation.
Realizing he had found something intriguing, Ralph—who had participated in previous digs at the Burghead site—handed the object over to UA archaeologist Gordon Noble, who led the excavation.
"What he handed over was incredible," Noble said in a statement, describing the find as "truly remarkable."
"Even before the conservation work we could see it was something really exciting as despite more than a thousand years in the ground we could see glints of the possible garnet setting," he said.
"There are very few Pictish rings which have ever been discovered and those we do know about usually come from hoards which were placed in the ground deliberately for safekeeping in some way. We certainly weren't expecting to find something like this lying around the floor of what was once a house but that had appeared of low significance so, in typical fashion, we had left work on it until the final day of the dig."
Many questions remain about the Pictish ring, such as the identity of the owner and its original purpose.
"It becomes a real guessing game of who owned it, what did they use it for and how was it lost," Ralph said in the release. "It is a real thrill to dig up an artifact in the knowledge that you are probably the first person to see it for 1,000-1,500 years."
Noble and colleagues are now hoping to learn more about the medieval artifact and the context in which it was found.
"We will now look at the ring, evidence of buildings and other artifacts to consider whether the ring was crafted on the site and who such an important piece of jewelry might have been made for," Noble said.
"We have some other evidence of metalworking and the number of buildings we have uncovered is quite striking. This further indicator of the high-status production of metalwork adds to the growing evidence that Burghead was a really significant seat of power in the Pictish period."
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