2023-07-24 05:00:12
On the left, an example of a statuette of Venus pinching her breast. On the right, a front of the half mold signed “Pistillus” representing Venus pinching her breast. These two artefacts were discovered during excavations in Autun (Saône-et-Loire), in June 2010. DENIS GLIKSMAN
It is not insulting Autun to qualify this commune of Saône-et-Loire as a modest town, with its approximately 13,000 inhabitants. Those, on the other hand, will resent us if we do not specify that the name of Autun is a contraction of the imperial Augustodunum.
As Stéphane Alix, operations manager at the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) reminds us, it was the first Roman emperor, Augustus, who ordered its construction: “Augustodunum is a key city in northern Gaul, capital of the Aedui people, who are an old ally of Rome. It is better located than the old capital, Bibracte, and it becomes a little witness to what a Gallo-Roman city should be: a strict orthonormal grid, a wall, a forum, thermal baths, temples…” And great economic vitality.
Among the “entrepreneurs” of Augustodunum, we find a certain Pistillus, coroplathe of his state, name which designates this craftsman who manufactures terracotta figurines. The historian Camille Jullian (1859-1933) said of Pistillus that it passed “master in the family genre, filling all of Gaul with nursery mothers, children in the cradle, domestic beds, guardian dogs of the hearth”. These white statuettes could also have a religious vocation, whether in a funerary context or as an offering to the gods. But the craftsman also creates, in a rather fine and elegant, rather classic style, erotic scenes.
“People of the people” for customers
Pistillus was known for his figurines, but, in 2010, an excavation carried out by Inrap in Autun, prior to the construction of social housing, brought to light his workshop. “It was a house with an interior courtyard that Pistillus will redevelop around a potter’s kiln” at the end of the 2nd century, explains Stéphane Alix, who led the excavation. In addition to this oven, archaeologists dig up moulds, statuettes, cooking misfires.
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Even if we have no idea of the price of a figurine, there is little doubt for Stéphane Alix that the customers of Pistillus “were common people. Its production was not intended to feed the upper social classes, who bought marble or bronze statues.. In this very compartmentalized Roman world, Pistillus is a successful entrepreneur: his productions are widely distributed, since they are found in Germany, Switzerland, Aquitaine and England. And it is growing: in 2017, new excavations north of Autun revealed a second coroplatic workshop, with even more remains than in the first.
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