Potin with Indian head

The Remi were a Belgic tribe occupying the territory around modern Reims, and their potin coinage represents some of the earliest cast — rather than struck — currency produced in northeastern Gaul. The so-called "Indian head" type takes its name from 19th-century collectors who saw resemblance to contemporary American imagery, a label that stuck despite having no iconographic relevance to the actual prototype, which derives from Mediterranean coin types filtered through generations of Gaulish abstraction.

Potin itself — a tin-rich bronze alloy — was the dominant coinage medium among Belgic tribes precisely because it could be cast in clay moulds rather than requiring the infrastructure of a proper mint.