Gold Stater with facing head

The Carnutes occupied a territory centered on what is now the Beauce plain, with Autricum (modern Chartres) among their principal settlements. Their facing-head staters represent a significant departure from the profile portraits that dominate Gaulish coinage of this period — a stylistic choice that appears deliberately local rather than derivative of Macedonian prototypes. Caesar later identified the Carnutes as holding a sacred forest that served as the annual gathering point for the druidic order across all of Gaul, suggesting a priestly-political elite with both the wealth and the authority to commission distinctive coinage.

The DT 2013 attribution places this piece within a relatively tight typological group. Die studies on Carnutes facing-head issues remain incomplete.