Ancient World

Giberville bucket

The Giberville bucket is a bucket in wood and bronze from a grave of the 5th or 6th century AD excavated in the commune of Giberville, in what is now the Calvados department in Normandy, France. It is now in the Normandy Museum in Caen. Discovered during excavations of a Merovingian necropolis in the 1970s, the Giberville bucket, dating from Late Antiquity, was found where the ancient practice of burying buckets in graves had been revived in Gaul since the 4th century. The bucket was unearthed in a necropolis that was in use from the late 5th to the 6th century, adding to its historical significance. Made of yew wood and bronze, the artifact is richly decorated with representations of a Roman emperor and a hunting scene. Because of this decoration, the excavator interprets the bucket as a gift from an emperor to a member of a barbarian community. This object was subsequently kept and buried with a woman at the beginning of the century. It is, therefore, a witness of the transition period between the Western Roman Empire's end and the Merovingian era's beginning. While fragments of other similar buckets have been found, the Giberville bucket stands out for its exceptional state of preservation and unique iconography, making it an extremely rare and significant object.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Assyrian lion weights
• ▸Chimney Rock National Monument
• ▸Armenian wine

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.