Le luxe en Gaule

Precious vases, gold jewellery and engraved gems, decoration of houses, desirable wines and gastronomic products, high quality architecture and luxurious furnishings of tombs, all these expressions of luxury are characterised by expensive, rare materials, worked by talented craftsmen. Their possession is a matter of ostentation and excess. However, the threshold at which an artefact enters the luxury category is not always clear: it changes according to time, place and scale. The luxuries of individual ornaments, of the private house, of professional groups, of the prince or the city are not expressed in the same way and do not have the same purpose. This book brings together 14 articles from a conference held at the musée de l’Arles antique in 2017, to accompany the exhibition on Ancient Luxury and the Berthouville Hoard. Based on recent discoveries and research, it questions the complex notion of luxury through the study of major hoards, funerary practices, monuments, and the circulation and hoarding of wealth.