A propos d'une aiguière en bronze « copte » trouvée dans une incinération à Palaminy (Haute-Garonne)

Abstract

The cremation tomb discovered in 1967 at Palaminy (Haute-Garonne) contains, as well as a large bronze basin and other various remains, a bronze ewer holding the funerary deposit. Dated by its finder as being from the 3rd century A.D., this vase, newly examined, has been ascribed to the series of vases called Coptic ; quite a few of them appear in the 7th century in Lombard tombs in Northern Italy, in Alamanic cemeteries in Baden- Wurtemberg and in the Rhine valley and in Visigothic Spain. Their origin, in turn ascribed to Coptic Egypt, to Italo- Byzantine workshops and to the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, remains vague. Whatever it may be, their chronology is henceforth well established and is situated in the late 6 th and in the 7th centuries. The vase of Palaminy is the first of its kind found in France for which the conditions of its discovery can be specified (a similar one was found during the 19th century at Penne d'Albigeois). Both of them allow our country to figure from now on upon maps showing the diffusion of these late disches. In addition, the Palaminy ever poses the problem of the survival of cremation at such a late date in an already largely christianized region (even though we lack a precise analysis ofits content).