Carnutes. PIXTILOS bronze coin, Class V, featuring a bearded head and a seated goddess (reverse), second half of the 1st century, c. 30–10 BCE.

LT.7058 - DT.2469 - RIG.224b - IDF CAR 4; Bronze - 3.94 g - 16.5 mm - 2 h
MP specimen No. 121 in the book “Surréelles Monnaies Gauloises,” by Samuel Gouet and Marc Petit—acquired from CGB in 2007, MONNAIES 28, No. 603.
High-quality bronze on a thick blank with well-centered designs and a vigorous strike. Smooth, lustrous dark green patina. TTB to Superb / Superb.
The PIXTILOS series is classified in the *Nouvel Atlas* as part of the “PIXTILOS and TITIVS peri-Aulerci group.” Highly Romanized, this series is said to be “better represented among the Aulerci Eburovices than among the Carnutes.” The origin is thought to be south of the Seine, from the Carnutes-Eburovices border to the coast, and these bronzes may have come from several workshops (see New Atlas, Vol. II, p. 114). B. Foucray, for his part, maintains the attribution to the Carnutes, associating them with the CATAL bronzes. He distinguishes these “widely distributed” bronzes into two groups based on weight (heavy for four classes and light for the others). Our bronze corresponds to CAR-4, classified as a heavy bronze. For the 39 specimens studied to date, the average weight is 3.75 g. With too few provenance records, the location of the workshop that produced this rare bronze seems difficult to determine; it “could just as easily be located north of the civitas as in Chartres or Orléans.”