We often come across history in the most unexpected ways. Most of the time, it lives in museums, behind glass, labelled and explained, safely removed from the mess of everyday life. But every once in a while, some relics are discovered through the hands of an ordinary person who just happened to be paying attention.Something similar happened with Kevin Minto, a trucker and former soldier from Somerset. He’s not an archaeologist. He doesn’t work for a museum. He spends his weekends walking fields, headphones on, looking for something, though rarely knowing what.And surprisingly, he happened to discover treasure in the form of a gold ring that’s nearly 1,700 years old.
A 1,700-year-old Roman ring (Photo: South West Heritage Trust)
Former soldier discovers a 1,700-year-old Roman gold ring while chilling on a weekend
Kevin Minto, a part-time metal detectorist, was walking a field near Ilminster in Somerset, southwest England, as he had done several times before.The ring is gold, weighs 48 grams, and at its centre sits a gemstone engraved with an image of Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, riding a two-horse chariot. It is unusually large, beautifully made, and, as Minto himself told CNN, “unique to Britain, there isn’t another one like it.”He also found a lead-lined coffin in the same area during his subsequent visits, marking the area as one of the unique and special patches of ground in recent British archaeological memory.Minto, now 68, said the significance of the find took a while to settle in. “It’s a bit unbelievable,” he told CNN. “It wasn’t until I went to the British Museum and saw it all laid out there with the coins that it really sunk in.”
The ring has since been acquired by the South West Heritage Trust
The ring has since been acquired by the South West Heritage Trust, which raised £78,010 to purchase both the ring and the accompanying coin hoard, which he had found the previous year.Under British law, metal detectorists are legally required to report any discovered treasure to a local finds liaison officer, after which a coroner holds an inquest. National or local museums can then apply to acquire the item for public benefit, with the proceeds typically split between the finder and the landowner, which is exactly what happened here. Minto split his half of the reward with a fellow detectorist from his group of military veterans, and still walked away with just over £19,500.
The ring belonged to a wealthy owner
Speaking to CNN, Amal Khreisheh, senior curator at the South West Heritage Trust, offered her thoughts on who the original owner might have been, “We think it belonged to somebody who was wealthy, so perhaps somebody involved in the local administration of the region or perhaps someone who had a farming estate in south Somerset, which was quite a wealthy area in this period. There were lots of villas and garden estates and it had the Fosse Way, a Roman road , going through it, so there was lots of trade.“The South West Heritage Trust, in its news release, called it an “extraordinary” and “unparalleled discovery” for Britain, and ones that reflect just how rare the find genuinely is.For Minto, who found the ring through a metal detector, the appeal of metal detecting has always been about more than what you might find. “When you do find something, your heart races,” he told CNN. “You never know what it is until you turn the soil over.”The ring and the coins are shown to local school children as part of a community engagement programme, before they eventually go on permanent display at The Museum of Somerset.
