Mr. Franks has recently presented to the British Museum a gold torque from Lincolnshire, which has three banded rings of gold, strung like beads upon it.
Some small penannular rings found on a gold torque at Boyton have already been mentioned.
The penannular rings so often found in Ireland, and commonly called ring money, may after all be of the nature of beads.
The large hollow penannular ornaments made of thin gold, and nearly triangular in section, seem also to be of the nature of beads or possibly clasps. Straps passed through the narrow notch would require some trouble to take out; but still such beads could be dislodged from their string without its ends being unfastened. The ornament shown in Fig. 489 was found near Dumbarton.[1523]
Others, similar, have been found in Anglesea, Heathery Burn Cave, near Alnwick,[1524] and in other places. They occur also in Ireland.[1525] They have frequently been found associated with armlets. Some Egyptian rings of carnelian, ivory, and other materials have similar notches through them. They have, however, been regarded as ear-rings.
Bronze finger rings seem to have been in occasional use.
In a perished urn with burnt bones, found with several others, one containing a barbed flint arrow-head, in the cemetery at Stanlake,[1526] Oxfordshire, there was a spiral bronze finger ring of the plainest form, the only fragment of metal brought to light during nearly a month’s excavations by Mr. Akerman and Mr. Stone. What may have been a finger ring was also found in the Heathery Burn Cave,[1527] Durham. It is formed of stout wire, the ends expanding, and slightly overlapping each other, and is ⅞ inch in diameter.
In the hoard of bronze antiquities found near Edington Burtle,[1528] Somersetshire, were several small rings; but with one exception they are hardly such as could have served for finger rings. This exceptional ring is penannular, and fluted externally like the bracelet found with it in the same hoard. The form is not unlike that of the gold ring engraved by Wilde[1529] as his Fig. 609.
Another form of ornament, the ear-ring, appears to have been known in Britain during the Bronze Period. In two of the barrows on the Yorkshire Wolds, explored by Canon Greenwell, F.R.S., female skeletons were found accompanied by such ornaments.