05 January 2009

Man finds 11th century ring with black diamond


Is there anyone who doesn't enjoy reading stories of finding buried treasure? Neatorama has just posted a link to a collection of ten treasures found this past year. This is one of them.
A treasure hunter was stunned when he unearthed a beautiful and historic gold ring with a rare black diamond set inside it in a muddy field.
John Stevens, 42, couldn't believe his eyes when he rubbed off the soil and saw lettering indicating the ring was from the early medieval period, possibly the 11th century.

It is believed the ring would have belonged to a wealthy person either from the Church, or possibly even royalty.
Black diamonds are rare today and would have been even rarer nearly 1,000 years ago, having come from Africa...
Stevens said he was with friends in a ploughed field... "I stuck at it for a couple of hours and had only a few interesting artefacts for my efforts.
"Then I found an Edward halfpenny and hope returned only to fade again as the day yielded rather less than we had hoped for.
"Some of my friends had switched off their detectors and were walking back to their cars. I was about to join them when I got a really good signal...
The ring has not yet been valued but is thought it could be worth tens of thousands of pounds.
I am so jealous, because I've never found any treasure from earlier than the 1920s (except for flakes from ancient flintknapping).

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