Hi!
I have some questions regarding the the celtic Briton culture before and during the early parts of the Anglo-Saxon settlement.
I am currently reading The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, which is his interpretation of the King Arthur legend. While I understand that this is a story and probably a lot of this is made up, he does seem to have done a significant amount of research.
He describes the warriors of Briton wearing "Warrior Rings". These are the spearheads and weapons of defeated enemies that have been heated and beaten into a ring. Which the warrior typically wears on his left hand to signify his prowess in battle. To me, this sounds like it would actually be a hinderence in battle. I imagine that these rings would be pretty large and may make it harder to hold a shield in the left hand.
Is there any real world evidence that such a practice took place? I have attempted to reasearch this on my own, but most of the searches I find are relating to videogames, or clearly fictional sources.
If there is evidence that this took place, are there any examples that have survived? If not, are there some similar warrior rituals that this may be based on
Thanks!
Not run across any rings like that.
Celtic jewellery had largely died out in England by the end second century AD with snake rings perhaps being the last hangers on. After that you are pretty much looking at standard Roman stuff (Christian rings start to appear for example). The is no particular break in jewellery styles with the withdrawal of Roman forces.
Celtic jewellery traditions continue in the periphery but again that isn't an approach I've run across.
What I will say is that it is significantly harder to find sources on non precious metal jewellery than the reverse. No end of sources on the gold and silver jewellery of the period. Precious and semi precious stones? Not a problem. Iron? You are going to have to start digging (although given that the survival of iron artefacts is very dependent on soil conditions the archaeologists may only have a limited amount of info).
Oversized rings did exist. The classic was the hollow Roman rings that were made to look like they contained a lot more gold than they actually did. There are also some oversized Ecclesiastical rings (partly to be worn over gloves, partly to be obvious). The ashmolean has a good collection of those if you want to see some.
Talking of the ashmolean they and along with the british museum and the V&A hold internationaly significant ring collections. Searching for Warrior Rings and similar in the British museum online catalogue:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx
doesn't throw up anything of relivance.
Sources?
Catherine Johns The Jewellery of Roman Britain Celtic and classical Traditions covers the Roman traditions leading into the time period.