12-year-old boy in UK finds ancient Roman bracelet while walking his dog

A 12-year-old boy walking his dog with his mom in Pagham, England, picked up a rare Roman golden cuff bracelet, Popular Mechanics writes.

Rowan Brannan, a schoolboy from the town of Pagham, discovered a fragment of a gold Roman bracelet dating back to the 1st century AD in a local field. At first, his mother told him to throw away the object and not bring it home, but the boy insisted on keeping it.

“Rowan has always been into finding all sorts of bits and pieces,” Amanda Brannan, Rowan’s mom, said. “I’m forever saying, ‘Put it down, it’s dirty,’ but on this occasion he kept holding this bit of metal, convinced that it was actual real gold.”

Experts at the British Museum later confirmed that the find was indeed part of a gold ornament. According to their assessment, such jewelry was awarded as a military honor in the Roman Empire for acts of bravery.