Volunteer picks up ‘bit of earth’ and finds rare 1,000-year-old ring in Scotland. See it

During an archaeological excavation in northern Scotland, a series of “shiny pebbles” discouraged a volunteer. But eventually, he picked up a “bit of earth” and found a rare 1,000-year-old ring.

“I had recently retired and saw a Facebook post looking for volunteers to help with the Burghead excavations … so I thought ‘why not?’” John Ralph, a former engineer, said in a Sept. 4 news release from the University of Aberdeen.

The two-week excavation was led by the university and focused on a Pictish fort in Burghead.

“My initial enthusiasm for ‘finds’ was somewhat dented by my knack of getting excited for ‘shiny pebbles,’” Ralph said. “So, when I picked up a bit of earth from the final trench on the last day of excavations, I thought ‘here we go again.’ It was only when I showed it to the volunteer next to me and he got excited that I thought it might really be something.”

Ralph took the dirt clump to Gordon Noble, the archaeology professor leading the dig.

Noble was stunned. “What he handed over was incredible,” Noble said in the release.

Ralph had uncovered a rare 1,000-year-old Pictish ring, the university said. The delicate piece of jewelry was well-preserved and still had a piece of “red glass” at the center.

“There are very few Pictish rings which have ever been discovered,” Noble said. “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.”

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The Picts were an ancient people group living in modern-day Scotland from at least the 300s onward, according to Britannica. They eventually joined a neighboring kingdom and “evolved into Scotland.”

Photos show the Pictish ring before and after being cleaned. Initially, it looked brown and slightly rusty with a detailed design visible but obscured.

After being cleaned,the ring looks relatively shiny and has a mixture of silver and gold hues. The head is shaped like a diamond with an engraved pattern around the outside. A deep red gemstone sits at the center.

“It is good to think that I’ve given something back with this little piece of the puzzle of the past,” Ralph said. “I like to think of archaeology as a dot-to-dot picture and I am delighted to have been able to make my own little mark.”

The ring is at the National Museum of Scotland, where it will be analyzed and eventually displayed. Archaeologists also plan to continue studying the surrounding fort and its artifacts.

Burghead is a coastal town in Scotland, a roughly 170-mile drive north from Edinburgh and roughly 600-mile drive northwest from London.

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