Boatmen, Druids and Parisii in Lutetia : archaeologising Parisian society in eighteenth-century civic epistemology

Abstract

This chapter argues that antiquarian expertise at the interface of philology, legal studies and religious studies was not anecdotal but helped to secure the new divide between the royal administration, the Parisian archbishop and municipal institutions. These tensions were reflected in the history of the origins of city shared by the competition between merchants, Roman administration and the Druids. The re-evaluation of the Parisii in the eighteenth century was underpinned by a drive towards objectification and revelation that was common to many fields of social observation, but which remains ambiguous. The Pillar of the Boatmen dates to the reign of the Emperor Tiberius in the first century civic epistemology and is the most ancient example of Gallo-Roman remains in Paris. It bears Latin and Gaulish inscriptions and portrays the Roman gods Jupiter, Tarvos Trigaranos and Vulcan and Gallic divinities such as Cernunnos.