When we think of Vercingetorix, Gallic grandeur and the Arverni people, the name “Gergovie” springs to mind, associated with the famous victorious battle against Julius Caesar and his legions (in 52 BC). We can dismiss it with the back of a brain and instead recall “Corent” (Puy-de-Dôme), a 70-hectare volcanic plateau located very close to Gergovie, because this is where the capital of the Arverni once stood, as demonstrated by the archaeological explorations carried out by Matthieu Poux since the beginning of the century.
In the interview he gave to World In April, this professor of Roman and Gallo-Roman archaeology at the Lumière-Lyon-II University announced that he had presented a new excavation project with the aim of “Put your finger in the monetary workshop” of Corent, who, he added, “it would be the first time.” A double blow for Matthieu Poux: his project was accepted and the excavation he has just completed has revealed the place where the Gauls of Corent minted money.
Thanks to the twenty previous campaigns he had carried out on the plateau, in particular in the 6 hectares of the city centre, the archaeologist had a good idea of where this workshop could be hidden. The summer’s efforts were therefore focused on a small space located in what was more than two thousand years ago a crafts district, east of the main square of Corent. A whole host of clues converged on this plot. “In 2010, a well in a neighboring building revealed this…” And Matthieu Poux pulled a strange metallic object out of a plastic bag: three small bronze ovals joined by a thin rod. “These are monetary blank spaces,” he specifies.
There is no culinary reference in this name “flan”, which in numismatics (the study of coins and medals) designates a metal round before its transformation into a coin. As this series of three blanks shows, these were moulded on an assembly line. “in small granules that were separated with scissors, describes the archaeologist. Then we put the blank space between two currency wedges.” metal coins in which the patterns to be marked on the coin were engraved in recess. A good blow with a hammer, and the coin had its obverse and reverse. The obverse generally featured a portrait of the king and the reverse a symbolic motif: a wild boar, a lyre or, in the case of Vercingetorix, a horse and a Roman amphora.
piece of stone
In 2010, in addition to these pellets, small iron scissors for cutting them and a crucible were discovered. Another excavation, another crucible, as well as a hammered corner, “mutilated so that it cannot be reused”. Even more, a monetary stamp: “That’s why I wanted to insist on this neighborhoodexplains Matthieu Poux, Go to the heart of this area. » In this case, it was not a patch of earth but of rock, because the volcanic table is exposed here. If there were any vestiges hidden there, to unearth them it was necessary to examine the earth trapped in the rocks and especially the cavities of anthropogenic origin: pillars of disappeared buildings, pits, ancient cisterns.
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