Bronze with wolf head to right

The Carnutes occupied the territory around modern Chartres and Orléans — the geographic and ritual center of Gaul, where Druids from across the Celtic world gathered annually for arbitration and ceremony. This bronze was struck during the precise decades when Caesar's campaigns dismantled that world entirely, culminating in the destruction of the principal Carnutes oppidum at Cenabum in 52 BC and the massacre of its Roman residents that helped trigger the broader Gallic revolt under Vercingetorix.

Carnutes bronzes of this type circulated in a region that changed hands violently and repeatedly in a compressed span of years. Few survived in anything above heavily worn condition.