20-year-old student finds 1,200-year-old gold just 90 minutes into her first archaeology dig

She struck gold literally. An hour and a half into her first excavation, an American archaeology student found an artefact extremely valuable for Britain's history. Dating back to the ninth century, the small, ornate artefact is believed to have had a ceremonial purpose.Yara Souza, a Florida-native and an undergraduate at Newcastle University in northern England, was digging along with other students at Redesdale in Northumberland when she discovered the gold piece. According to a statement from the university, the 1.5-inch piece has a decorative finial at one end and appears to be from Britain's early medieval period.The dig's location in Redesdale, a valley in Northumberland National Park, is near Dere Street, which was once upon a time a "major Roman road," per the statement. Britain was part of the western Roman Empire for more than 350 years from 43 C.C. until the early fifth century, when the declining empire fell. It was the Roman soldiers who laid the Dere Street, also known as the 'Great North Road' between 79 and 81 C.E. The path that runs from modern-day York, England, to the Firth of Forth, Scotland, and is today an over 200-mile drive, was used by them to colonise nort...