Elephant ivory rings in early medieval graves reconsidered

This work is the most complete investigation to date of the enigmatic ivory rings found in graves of fifth- to seventh-century lowland Britain. This new survey of the archaeological evidence has produced a corpus of 752 ivory rings from seventy-eight cemeteries. This corpus has been used to reveal a novel pattern of use, with the majority of ivory rings deposited in eastern England in the fifth century. In the sixth century, the distribution widened, and the number of rings deposited decreased. Most of the ivory rings in lowland Britain were deposited before 560.