By Madeleine Muzdakis on September 22, 2024

Photo: National Museums Scotland

“It is a real thrill to dig up an artifact in the knowledge that you are probably the first person to see it for 1000-1500 years.”

Over a thousand years ago, a people called the Picts dominated northern Scotland. Dubbed “Picti” by the Romans when the latter encountered these “painted people,” these peoples still offer a certain level of historical mystery. In an effort to understand the ancient Dark Age people better, University of Aberdeen’s Professor of Archaeology, Gordon Noble, has been excavating the remains of a Pictish settlement near the modern town of Burghead in Moray, Scotland. On the last day of the dig, a volunteer discovered a particularly exciting find. John Ralph, an Aberdeen alum, unearthed a crusted ring, which, upon cleaning, turned out to be an incredible example of Pictish jewelry.

The ring as found. (Photo: University of Aberdeen)

Over the past three years, the dig had been investigating the ancient Pictish fort and settlement that once lay in Moray. Ralph joined the latest two-week stint of digging due to his enthusiasm for archeology. After many false alarms digging through the dirt, he found something intriguing in the soil on his last day. Showing it to another volunteer, he began to suspect this might be a true artifact.

According to Professor Noble, in a university statement, “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. 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.”

Ralph adds, “It is a real thrill to dig up an artifact in the knowledge that you are probably the first person to see it for 1000-1500 years. It becomes a real guessing game of who owned it, what did they use it for and how was it lost.”

John Ralph and his discovery. (Photo: University of Aberdeen)

Noble explains that future efforts will look for the ring’s background, both owner and creation: “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.” […]

More: Rare Pictish Ring Discovered by Volunteer in Scotland