Abstract
n the area associated with the Battle of Rakovník of 1620, a finger ring, typologically belonging to the so-called Memento mori, or mourning rings, was found. Jewellery pieces commemorating the magnificence of death or the memory of the deceased have been known since antiquity, but their spread throughout Europe mainly occurred from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
The discovered specimen is made of gold, decorated with black and white enamel and its head bears the motif of a coffin, skull and crossbones. It was probably made in the 16th-17th centuries.
Judging from its chronology and place of discovery, it can be hypothetically linked to the battle between the Estates and the Catholic Emperor which took place at the end of the Bohemian phase of the Thirty Years' War. However, it is an isolated find with no direct analogies in the Czech Republic and its vicinity, so the place of its manufacture remains unknown.