Les phalères aux tritons d’époque romaine : un nouvel exemplaire découvert dans la villa de Bulgnéville (Vosges)

A copper alloy phalera discovered during the excavation of a Roman villa at Bulgnéville (Vosges), with openwork decoration of crested newts (Triturus cristatus), is alomost identical to another phalera, found some sixty years ago on the surface of a field on the site of the small Roman town of Vorganium (Kerilien at Plounéventer, Finistère). Similar artefacts have also been found in Belgium, Austria and Hungary. Such phaleras, with their characteristic ternary animal decoration, attached to horse harnesses, are dated to the late second or early third century and attest to the continuity of aesthetic traditions rooted in the native cultural background during the Roman period.