A further indication of dissidence is that the Coligny calendar seems not to
have had any official status. It does not appear, indeed, in any dated inscrip-
tion from Roman Gaul: all dated inscriptions use only the Julian calendar.^36
This suggests that neither the Coligny calendar, nor any other version of the
Gallic lunar calendar, were used as local, official calendars in the Gallo-Roman
cities. The status of the Coligny calendar in Gallo-Roman society remains in
fact unclear. Some have suggested that the proximity of the calendar fragments
to a statue of Mars discovered in the same locality and dating from a similar
period (50– 150 CE) indicates that the calendar was part of a sanctuary, and
thus, that its function may have been cultic.^37 The argument of proximity,
however, is not convincing; moreover, the multiple uses that a sanctuary may
have served in ancient society, together with the difficulty of distinguishing
between‘civil’and‘cultic’functions in an ancient historical context, mean
that the identification of this calendar as‘civil’or‘cultic’is fraught with
difficulties.^38
This said, the Coligny calendar was neither socially marginal nor an isolated
phenomenon. The monumental scale of the inscription, on a bronze plate that
measured originally 1.48 m0.90 m, indicates that it could only have been
produced by people of means. The involvement of the local aristocracy in its
production seems evident from the high level of numeracy and literacy that
the creation of the 25-year cycle and its complex inscription would have
required (even if, as argued above, knowledge of astronomy would not neces-
sarily have been needed). Furthermore, this calendar appears to have been
widely diffused. Fragments of a similar calendar have been discovered in the
town of Villards d’Héria (commune of Jura), 31 km east of Coligny (Duval and
Pinault 1986: 257). These fragments are fully compatible with the Coligny
a more complex model of cultural and political interaction where Roman culture was at once
espoused by the Gallic aristocracies and perverted, where it was appropriated but renegotiated
and reformulated in their own terms and to their own, perceived political advantage. For similar
post-colonialist approaches to Gallo-Roman culture seeWoolf (1998) 240–7,Webster (1997).
(^36) In contrast to the Roman East, where inscriptions are normally dated according to local
calendars. Note in particular the Julian dates in Bertrandyet al.(2005) no. 38, an inscription
from Groslée (south of Coligny, along the Rhône, dated 164CE), andWuilleumier (1963) nos.
233 – 4, 239, late 2nd- and early 3rd-cent. inscriptions from Lugdunum (Lyon, also not too far, in
space and time, from Coligny). Theparapegmaon the Rhine clepsydra (above, n. 33), also not far
from Coligny and dating from about the same period, comprises only the Julian calendar; but
here the absence of any other calendar is of limited significance, because the purpose of this
parapegmawas to adjust the settings of the clepsydra to seasonal hours for which a lunar or other
calendar might not have been useful. The lunarparapegmatafrom Gaul do not necessarily imply
the use of lunar calendars: see discussion further in this chapter.
(^37) Duval and Pinault (1986) 35–7, Olmsted (1992) 70–1.
(^38) Duval and Pinault (1986) 399, 431–2 conclude that the Coligny calendar served as the‘civil’
calendar of the Gallo-Romanmunicipiaon the grounds that—in their view—there is nothing
particularly religious or cultic about it. This line of argument, distinguishing‘civil’from‘cultic’
and assuming their mutual exclusivity, is clearly unsatisfactory.
312 Calendars in Antiquity