"very tentative" terminus post quem of circa 550 CE. Significant artefacts The best known artefact from the Anglo-Saxon burial is the Snape ring, which consists of a Roman onyx gemstone engraved with the figure of Bonus Eventus which has been set in a large hoop. After the original excavation the ring disappeared, and was returned to Bruce-Mitford (and then the British Museum) by the granddaughter of the original excavator. Filmer-Sankey disputed Rupert Bruce-Mitford's analysis, arguing instead that the Snape Ring had been created in continental Europe, probably by Frankish craftsmen in the early-mid 6th century. Supporting this idea, he noted that it had close parallels in both form and decoration to Frankish jewelry of this date and that Germanic settings of Roman intaglios are common on the continent but otherwise unknown from Anglo-Saxon England. Another of the significant finds from the burial was a glass claw-beaker. Filmer-Sankey noted that it probably dated to the mid-sixth century. Antiquarian and archaeological investigation The first recorded excavation at the site took place in 1827, when seven or eight gentlemen, reported to be Londoners, opened up several of the barrows at the site, discovering "quantities of gold rings, brooches, chains etc." After their activities at Snape, they proceeded to dig up a tumulus on the other side of the River Alde, at Blaxhall Common. Little is known of their findings, but a letter recording the event was sent to The Field magazine in March 1863 by a man from Snape who was only a boy at the time of the original excavation. Nothing more is known of either the excavators or the artefacts that they unearthed. It is believed that the mounds were excavated for a second time in the mid-19th century by antiquarians working for the Ordnance Survey; no records of this investigation have been found. Davidson excavation: 1862–1863 A third, more systematic and thorough excavation of the cemetery was then undertaken in 1862 by Septimus Davidson, the landowner of the area of the heath that fell to the north of the bisecting road. A city solicitor and former legal adviser to the government of the Ottoman Empire, he had no training in excavation, but was curious as to the historic mounds that lay on his land. He was assisted in this endeavor by three others: local surgeon Dr Nicholas Hele, and two other men known only as Francis Francis and 'Mr C'.