FINGER RING

Roman gold finger ring with a simple D-shaped hoop widening and thickening at the shoulders to the bezel which has an open lozenge shaped hole in the centre to hold a stone or intaglio, now missing. The shoulders and bezel have been formed of a flattened area of gold the long sides of which have been rolled inwards, to meet in the middle on the shoulders and to clasp the missing stone. The shoulders and bezel are thus hollow and the edges of the setting for the stone rough and slightly irregular where the edge has been pushed over the edge of the stone to hold it.

The ring has been squashed with the hoop badly distorted and a tear into the hollow shoulders on one side. It is possible the hole at the bezel to hold the stone was originally more oval and has been distorted as it is now torn to one side.

The ring is now a maximum of 25.4mm long, 10.5mm wide and 6.2mmm thick, 1.6mm wide by 1.0mm thick at the back of the hoop and 10.5mm wide by 3.5mm thick at the bezel; it weighs 1.64 grams.

The rolled form of the hoop is paralleled by a gold finger ring from West Berkshire (Treasure case 2009 T306, LON-AB8382) which is paralleled in the report to a copper-alloy arm-ring from Augst (Riha 1990, 62, 145, Taf. 22, 598) and dated from the 1^st to the 4^th centuries. Although that ring has no opening at the bezel.

Treasure case 1998 T26 (WILT-65BD43) also featured a Roman gold ring with a hollow rolled bezel, although in that case formed of three rolled tubes side by side, each with similar openings for the stone to this piece and lines of granulation. C. Johns suggested on that Treasure report that the hollows centres were probably packed with a sulphur material to hold the gem, an technique seen on fourth century hollow rings from the Thetford Treasure (Johns & Potter 1983, nos 17 and 19) although hollow but not rolled rings are also known from the 1^st and 2^nd centuries (e.g. Treasure case 2014 T147, KENT-2E54D3 and Treasure case 2009 T426, BH-58E8E6).

Consequently, in terms of age, as it is likely to be over 300 years old at the date of finding, and as the object contains a minimum of 10% precious metal it qualifies as Treasure under the stipulations of the Treasure Act 1996.