Four Gallic busts buried in the middle of the 1st century BC were discovered during preventive archaeological digs in Trémuson, Côtes-d'Armor, near Saint-Brieuc, we learned Thursday from the Inrap (National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research).
Discovery face against the ground three weeks ago in a rectangular pit, the first statue, 40 cm high, carved in the rock and bearing a torque (a necklace, note) around the neck, has a man's face to the hair and with the beard neat, chiselled with detail, indicates a statement of Inrap. The other three statues, of similar size, were discovered Tuesday in a well filled in the Gallic period and are still under preliminary investigation.
"Many vestiges testify to the obvious wealth of the owners"
"Such discoveries are particularly rare in the context of excavations to study the very place where they were buried or abandoned," says Inrap. According to Stéphane Bourne, scientific director of Trémuson excavations, there are in France "twenty copies" of this type of busts.
These discoveries were made in "the residential space of a Gallic farm founded in the fourth century BC (...) Many vestiges testify to the obvious wealth of owners," the statement said. Among the many remains discovered, "the ceramic found is a fairly neat local production and quite a few fragments of amphorae indicate that the inhabitants consumed wine from Italy, then from Spain".
The four discovered statues "recall those found in Paule, 70km away, interpreted as the effigies of members of the aristocracy to perpetuate their memory and family size," according to the release of Inrap. The excavated site in Trémuson has an area of just over 5.000m2, according to Stéphane Bourne.
Conducted twenty years ago, the excavations of Paule had allowed the discovery of a granite statue with a lyre, which led archaeologists to interpret this bust as that of a bard, an eminent figure of the society of the time.