You know the miniature gemstone of Alexander the Great I blogged about last month?

Well, it turns out he was found by one Megan Webb, an undergraduate student from Annapolis, Maryland, who joined the University of Washington Field School’s program at Tel Dor to get some extra credits and learn about ancient ceramics over the summer.

Beginner’s luck doesn’t even begin to cover it. I mean, this is the only Alexander portrait carved on miniature gemstone that has ever been found in an official dig — there are only a dozen or so in the world, and the others were all looted so we have no idea where they came from — and the nice Art History/Ceramics major who joined on an Indiana Jones-inspired lark finds it?

I wonder if some of the professionals on the dig were secretly shaking their fists. Although her boss, Sarah Culpepper Stroup, certainly isn’t.

“She was so careful, so methodical in her work, that’s really how she found it,” Stroup said. “She’s fantastic.”

I’m glad to hear that, because if some slacker had stumbled on what is widely considered the find of the year on the Mediterranean, many heads would doubtless explode.

This is such a major find, not only for its beauty and quality, but also because it rewrites the history of the Macedonian conquest of the area.

Alexander the Great’s armies swept across the area – including Tel Dor – around 322 B.C., she said. But because the town walls are still intact, Stroup thinks there was no resistance there.

“You don’t wear a very expensive, beautiful ring with the figure of Alexander the Great if you’re resenting your Greek overlord,” she said.

“I think the story people have been telling has been a very dramatic story…. but as we’re seeing at Dor, that’s not how it happened. (Here) we see how cultures will adopt and adapt and transform another culture.”

We still don’t know for sure what stone it is, incidentally, but Stroup thinks it’s a carnelian. It would have been set in a ring originally (hence its itsy-bitsiness) and is about 2300 years old.

Almost a thousand graves have been excavated over the past nine years in the cemetery of Arhontiko, near the ancient city of Pella where Alexander the Great was born.

Now we can add more to the tally, as archaeologists have uncovered 50 new graves dating to the 6th c. BC.

Weapons, helmets, gold, pottery and figurines were buried in some of the graves, indicating high social status among the deceased.

Gold foil pieces decorated with animal figures ornamented the eyes, mouth and chest of the aristocrats. The animal designs were symbols of royal power.

Ten of the 24 tombs, dated to the Archaic Period (580-480 BC), are believed to have belonged to aristocrat warriors. Based on the findings, the specific tombs are positioned along two paths that crossed each other, confirming that the “best” spots in pre-Classical cemeteries were reserved for the tombs of the wealthy and members of the aristocrat class.

Moreover, the deceased were buried based on their social class while members of the same family were buried close to each, other forming clusters dating back to the second half of the 7th century BC (late Iron Age) and even down to the early Hellenistic era.