A rare gold ring once worn by the wife of an elite Roman soldier has been named in honour of the late daughter of one of the Cumbrian men who found it.
Posted on 05/28/2018 11:25:58 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Pensioner pals Graham Ryan and Bob Dennison, who live next to each other at Beckfoot, near Silloth, found the ring in January last year while using their metal detectors on a Maryport beach. has been declared as treasure after being examined by experts at both Tullie House in Carlisle and the British Museum in London. Mr Ryan, 73, has also been told his suggested name for the treasure - Angie's ring - has been accepted. Mr Dennison's daughter, Angie, 43, died last year... Recalling the day they found the ring, he said: "It was bitterly cold, and we just went to this site hoping to find something. Within five minutes, I had found the ring. It was in some red clay. At first, I thought it one of those ring-pulls, but an old one... I was amazed by what I was looking at. I just stood there for a little while, looking at it." The gold ring, with a garnet stone as its main feature, is in pristine condition, said Graham, who is a long-term volunteer site assistant at world famous Vindolanda Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall... "I think this ring must have belonged to someone of wealth - a woman such as a Roman commandant's wife... "Bob and I were out together, so the ring is classed as a joint find, and I suggested that it should be called Angie's Ring, because Bob lost his daughter a month previously." ...The two men hope the ring will be acquired by Maryport's Senhouse Roman Museum, which they say has expressed an interest in it... The finder of such treasure usually gets a share of its value once it has been formally acquired by a museum.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesandstar.co.uk ...
A rare gold ring once worn by the wife of an elite Roman soldier has been named in honour of the late daughter of one of the Cumbrian men who found it.
UK law mandates surrendering most historic finds to the state.
Interesting. What a story it could tell!
Find, Fence and Forget.
“What historic find? I didn’t find anything.”
WOW! Nice.
I’ve thought about buying a Roman legionnaire’s ring. There were tons of them made from copper and bronze and other such nonprecious metals. They aren’t very expensive....but it’d be really cool to own/wear something that was over 2000 years old.
Ramble On - S5 , Ep05
From the other comments in this thread, looks like the story it can tell is very much reliant on who finds it.
mark
Seems like metal detectors are a popular passtime in the UK.
They’ve been invaded before. (and its happening again.)
Metal detecting is what I want to do if I’m able to retire one day. Some people like golf, I’ll metal detect.
I don’t think they are “surrendered”. They are turned over to the experts and they go through it. If the find is not considered “historical” or worthy of study, museums, etc. the finder can keep it. If it is worthy, the government pays the finder. I thought the government had to pay the entire estimated value of the find, but this article says “a portion”.
The treasure laws in England are pretty good - promotes metal detecting to uncover their history. I looked into trying to do it in my state of Washington. Lots of various laws and regulations trying to do it in parks, beaches, etc. (Stupid laws - no wonder nobody ever finds Roman coins on the beaches of Puget Sound!)
You are correct.
The government determines who keeps the find.
I’m not sure how a value would be fairly established however...
I’ve found arrowheads in various creek bottoms in the Missouri Ozarks where I live.
No metal detector, however...
:^) I once had the acquaintance of a British-born character who seemed to have an unusually diverse job history (ahem), and professed to having picked up a lot of successful techniques for locating buried Roman hoards (presumably last minute attempts to hide property before fleeing). Dunno if that part was true, but he knew some oddball field archaeology, like the "birdfoot" method of predicting the Roman and post-Roman paths to river crossings. He also used to holiday in Gibraltar, claiming to pay for the trips by free-diving to a deep spot where earlier vacationers tended to have lost Rolexes etc.
The following is something I found. (Imagine - first time out with a metal detector, seven yards from where you parked your car!! Another story in the article the guy was paid $5.3 million for an even rarer find! I’m not sure if the 50% split with the landowner is law, or if it is from a brief written agreement between the detectorist and the the landowner.
“In September 2009, David Booth, a park ranger in Stirling, Scotland, packed up his brand-new metal detector (”I practiced at home picking up nails and bits”), drove to a field, walked seven yards (six meters) from his parked car, and scored big. His first sweep with a metal detector yielded a spectacular find: four gold torques, or neck bands, from the first century B.C.—the most important hoard of Iron Age gold found in Scotland to date.
Several days later, Stuart Campbell of the National Museum of Scotland, the man in charge of “treasure trove” finds, as they are known in the United Kingdom, arrived at his Edinburgh office, opened his email to find a message with the subject “gold jewelry” and thought, “Oh, no, not another Victorian watch chain.” Then he saw the images.
Thanks to laws in England and Scotland that encourage artifact hunters to cooperate with archaeologists, Booth was paid the current market price for the cache, about $650,000, set by the queen’s and lord treasurer’s remembrancer (the British crown’s representative in Scotland). He split the sum with the landowner.”
So, that’s where I lost my ring.
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