Bone ring

Object of the Month tags

As the nights draw in and people look to Halloween and Bonfire night, spooky skeletons are a perfect choice for a costume and a fright. People have used bone not just for scares, read on below to find out more.

Bone Finger Ring

This object is something of a mystery. Bone is an unusual choice for making a ring in the first place – most surviving rings tend to be of more durable material such as metal or even stone. However, the dotted ornamentation on the bezel of the ring suggests that the maker may have been intentionally copying metal examples and it is possible that finely drilled dots were intended to hold metal pinheads.

A finger ring made from animal bone, with rectangular bezel

The bone finger ring, which is on permanent display in Harborough Museum.

The ring was found by Mr G. Neale to the east of the church at Glooston, a small village some three miles away from Hallaton and donated in the 1950s. Although the label suggests a Saxon date, it has been argued, based on its design, that the ring was made in the later Saxo-Norman to early Medieval period, 1067 – 1300 AD. 

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