Other pieces, including the bowls, spoon, and cones, may have been used in religious ceremonies or community rituals.

Two of the scabbard chapes and a sword pommel appear to be Anglo-Saxon, probably made in Mercia in the late eighth century; one has an inscription with a prayer in Old English.

Gifts were often exchanged between Anglo-Saxon and Pictish rulers, and generally "weapons are among the objects which travelled most widely in the early medieval period".

[4] The hoard was discovered on 4 July 1958 by a schoolboy, Douglas Coutts, during an excavation of a medieval chapel on St Ninian's Isle.

Coutts was helping visiting archaeologists led by Professor Andrew Charles O'Dell of Aberdeen University.