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RARE GALLIC BRACELET A substantial copper alloy bracelet com…
See original version (French)
110
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RARE GALLIC BRACELET A substantial copper alloy bracelet com…
See original version (French)
Estimate €1,500 - €2,000
Voluntary lot
Description
RARE GALLIC BRACELET
A substantial copper alloy bracelet comprising three sections with raised sections featuring engraved designs and hinges.
France, Iron Age, early Gallic period, circa 500 BC.
Height: 5.4 cm – Internal diameter: 9 cm
(Visible damage and missing sections)
Included is a fragment of another bracelet from the same group bearing the old handwritten label: ‘Tumulus d’Attancourt / Haute-Marne’.
Height: 4.3 cm – Length: 8.4 cm
Provenance:
– Excavated from the Attancourt tumulus in 1865
– Auguste Nicaise Collection (1828–1900)
– Julien Bessoneau Collection (1842–1916)
– Léveilley Collection, dispersed at the Chauviré & Courant auction on 26 May 2025, lot no. 108.
– Private collection, France.
Bibliography:
– Proceedings of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 27th year, No. 4, 1883. Session No. V, pp. 437 ff.: ‘The Attancourt Tumulus’ by Auguste Nicaise.
– Denise Bretz-Mahler, ‘The Nicaise Collection: the 1st and 2nd Iron Ages’, Mémoires de la Société d’agriculture, commerce, sciences et arts du département de la Marne, vol. 75, 1960, pp. 7–23.
– Louis Lepage, ‘An Iron Age Tumulus: the Attancourt Mound’, Mémoires de la Société des lettres, des sciences, des arts, de l’agriculture et de l’industrie de Saint-Dizier, 1974.
– Jean-Jacques Thévenard (ed.), Archaeological Map of Gaul, 52: Haute-Marne, Paris, 1996.
Note:
The armilla presented here can be precisely linked to the grave goods from the Attancourt tumulus, excavated in 1865. An old plate depicting the grave goods from this tomb confirms that it belongs to this archaeological collection. The *Archaeological Map of Gaul* devoted to the Haute-Marne reproduces this documentation and notes that casts of the objects from the burial are, moreover, held at the National Archaeological Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, under inventory numbers 27.940 for our arm ring and 27.941 for the accompanying fragment of a bracelet.
From Auguste Nicaise, the object subsequently passed into the collection of Julien Bessoneau, an industrialist from Angers, a significant part of whose archaeological collection was later acquired in the 1970s and 1980s by Jean-Pierre Léveilley. The sale of this latter collection by Chauviré & Courant in May 2025 included numerous objects bearing old labels from the Nicaise collection, reinforcing the consistency of this provenance.
Owing to its rediscovered provenance and the quality of its decoration, this armilla constitutes an important and well-documented example of aristocratic funerary artefacts from the Gallic period.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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