[Red Badger]

PinGGG!.....................

[blueunicorn6]

It’s a Dachshund.

[reed13k]

To me it looks like the top of a signet ring or some other seal. Dragon is what I see in the black, though it could be a stylized horse.

[ComputerGuy]

Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess - Uncle Morty

[telescope115]

I’m puzzled by the last paragraph. Is the author trying to lecture us?
What does the author consider “things we don’t need”?
Are we getting a moral lesson from an archeological artifact?

[Berlin_Freeper]

Further proof that people were more intelligent in the past and the more distant the more critically intelligent.

[Jamestown1630]

Other than the obviously utilitarian (and even sometimes then) people buy things that represent ideas or ideals that they have about themselves, life, etc.

It’s true that you ‘can’t take it with you’, but I’ve wondered if we don’t carry the ideas and concepts that ‘things’ have really represented to us. Will a Mozart or Beethoven carry with him the impulse or creative idea that resulted in his own favorite creations?

[GOPJ]

ping

[I-ambush]

“stop buying things you don’t need.”
But it was on sale, plus, I had a coupon.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

It's a kitten snake. :)

(AKA ferret)

[Migraine]

Bill Cosby once said “No matter what you started out to make, it always turns out to be an ashtray”; so maybe that’s it?

[enumerated]

I think it’s the foil you peel off the top of a champagne cork

[jacknhoo]

Candle snuffer...

[sphinx]

The “expert” in the article manages to be unnecessarily befuddled. The object is said to be at least 1,200 years old. Ok, that takes us to 800 AD. Charlemagne is doing his thing on the continent. Byzantium is under pressure from the A-rabs, Bulgars and assorted barbarians, but it is still holding its own in Anatolia and across scattered coastal areas in Greece and Italy. In England, the Anglo Saxon kingdoms were consolidating and beginning the recovery from the Dark Ages. The Danes will show up shortly and set things back; Alfred the Great is still nearly a century in the future.

So: we have here an usual object, but people were getting around. Is this object unique in a broader European context, or is it unique only in terms of finds in England?

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

“it was created just as carefully as something like a Bible... “

Bull honkey

[WeaslesRippedMyFlesh]

It’s a bobby dazzler

[central_va]

The original owner:

[ProtectOurFreedom]

"And no one will remember the stuff you once owned during your time on Earth either, so stop buying things you don’t need."

Who is he kidding? Even the valuable stuff we got for free will be remembered by everybody!

[null and void]

It’s a status thimble...

[aimhigh]

archaeologists reportedly can’t determine the purpose of the mysterious object.

Imagine what future archaeologists will say when the discover a pet rock.