FINGER RING

The ring is formed of six plain, thin rods of circular section which have been plaited and hammered together into two thin wires with a slight gap between them at the back of the hoop. The extra thinness at the ends suggests that they originally overlapped rather than that the hoop has been broken at this point. A number of marked dents and abrasions on the outer surfaces of the rods may be due to the fact that the ring was found in rubble being used as the foundation for a house driveway.

Plaited finger-rings of triple rods were introduced to Britain and Ireland in the Viking period during the 10th century, but more complex forms like the present find occur predominantly in the 11th, e.g. gold rings from the Hebrides (?North Uist) and Stenness, Orkney (J. Graham-Campbell, 1995, The Viking-Age Gold and silver of Scotland (AD 850-1100), National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, 54-5, pl. 50: 25, 1-3, and 27, 2-3). It is interesting to note another Hampshire find of a plaited gold ring from a hoard discovered at Soberton, containing late Saxon and early Norman coins, which was deposited c. 1068 (O.M. Dalton, 1912, Catalogue of the Finger Rings, Early Christian, Byzantine, Teutonic, Mediaeval and Later Bequeathed by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, London, no. 215).

The ring from South Wonston was found in 1959, so would not qualify as Treasure according to the stipulations of the Treasure Act 1996. As an apparent stray find with no evidence of having been buried with the intention of recovery, it would not have qualified as Treasure Trove, either.

Surface metal analysis conducted at the British Museum indicated an approximate gold content for the ring of 94-97%, a silver content of 2-4% and approximately 1% copper; it weighs 13.7 grams.