Ancient Celtic Trade Center Forged Weapons, Tools and Shackles for Human Slaves

A metalworking hub in Gaul reveals a darker side of Iron Age life.

At a thriving Celtic trading center in western France, metalworkers forged weapons, keys, tools, and fittings for horses. They also made objects with a far darker purpose.

Archaeologists working at Allonnes, in France’s Loire Valley, uncovered at least five iron restraints or restraint fragments designed for human wrists and ankles. It’s a very unusual type of find as not much is known about this type of practice from that period. Basically, the findings raise the possibility that enslaved people passed through the settlement alongside metal, wine, and other traded goods.

A Darker Trade

France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, known as Inrap, excavated the site in 2018 and 2019 before the construction of a housing development. Archaeologists uncovered only about 1.5 hectares, but they estimate that the full settlement extended across 10 to 20 hectares. Allones was more than a loose connection of farm buildings, it was a carefully organized settlement with workshops, homes, streets, open spaces, wells, and a major religious sanctuary.

The town stood near routes connecting Angers with Tours and Le Mans with Poitiers. That location placed it at a crossroads between several Gaulish territories and made it a natural center for trade. Imported wine amphorae from the Roman world show that some of those commercial connections reached well beyond the Loire Valley.

Smiths and other specialists worked with iron and copper alloys, producing swords, spearheads, keys, tools, horse-harness fittings, and personal objects. Slag, metalworking debris, unfinished pieces, and material intended for recycling show that craftspeople produced and repaired goods on site.

But one particular type of ironwork stands out.

The discoveries included a double wrist restraint, an ankle restraint, and three additional restraint fragments. Objects like these are exceptionally rare in Iron Age Gaul, where prisoners and enslaved people usually left little unmistakable evidence in the archaeological record.

One wrist restraint measured less than 6 centimeters (2.4 inches) across, suggesting it may have held a woman or child. Each ankle ring weighed more than 1 kilogram.

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“The identification of restraints and weapons suggests a hierarchical social organization composed of dominant and subordinate groups—prisoners or slaves,” said Thierry Lejars, a specialist in Celtic metalwork, in a translated interview with Inrap.

Granted, this doesn’t guarantee that Allonnes was a dedicated slave market or that it regularly traded slaves. Shackles demonstrate that someone was forcibly restrained, but they don’t tell archaeologists precisely why. While slavery is a very plausible possibility, a captive might have been a prisoner of war, a convicted person, a debtor forced into servitude, or someone already treated as property.

The People the Record Usually Misses

Archaeology tends to preserve the lives of people who controlled land, buildings, weapons, and valuable objects. The lives of those who lacked power are usually harder to study.

Cemeteries can offer valuable informations. Human remains can reveal injuries, disease, diet, strenuous labor, and movement between regions. But a skeleton cannot, by itself, show whether someone was legally enslaved. That makes the Allonnes shackles particularly valuable. They provide material evidence for a group that written sources and elite objects often leave invisible.

They also complicate the image of the settlement. Allonnes was prosperous, connected, and technically skilled. Its workshops produced valuable objects, while its merchants participated in long-distance exchange.

Yet the same networks that carried wine and metal may also have moved human beings under force.

A Sanctuary Filled With Broken Offerings

The settlement’s metal objects also reveal another side of life at Allonnes, which appears to have thrived for centuries.

Beside its workshops and homes stood a religious sanctuary that remained in use for roughly six centuries. It began during the Gaulish occupation and survived after Roman rule transformed the settlement and the surrounding region. They also seem to have had a practical connection with religion.

People deposited weapons, coins, ornaments, iron bars, and other objects as offerings. But before surrendering them, they often made sure nobody could use them again.

They bent swords, broke weapons, cut objects, and damaged coins with chisels, files, or shears. The destruction appears deliberate rather than accidental: they wanted to make sure the gift is for the gods, not for other people.

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“These mutilations reveal a ritual intention: the removal of the coin’s commercial function in order to dedicate the object to the sacred, thereby ensuring the permanence of the offering,” Isabelle Bollard-Raineau, an ancient-coin expert with the French Ministry of Culture, told Inrap (translated).

The finds are now being conserved at the Arc’Antique laboratory in Nantes. Further study may show how Allonnes worked as both a place of skilled production and a place where power was written into metal.