ARTIFACT

ings can have many meanings. They can be tokens of friendship, badges of wealth, markers of membership, or symbols of union. Unlike many other pieces of jewelry, (“remember you must die”), would have been clear. “The motif and inscription would acknowledge and remind them of the brevity and vanities of life,” says archaeologist Mark Redknap of National Museum Wales. The skull and skeleton were used in late medieval and Renaissance art and literature to emphasize human mortality, explains Redknap. “The ring, with its symbolism and the admonitory inscription, was an expression of the sentiment in the style of the period,” he says.