Rivets monétiformes

This article offers a first assessment of data about a group coin-like objects rarely brought to numismatists' attention outside detectorists' publications : "monetary nails", in fact bronze rivets whose head bears the imprint of a coin type. The score of specimens inventoried here reproduce twelfth and thirteenth century deniers struck in Southern France. Many questions are considered such as the way they were produced, more likely by striking rather than casting, possibly with official dies which sometimes document unpublished varieties. They could have been used to decorate chests used for monetary purposes (e.g. by the mint or financial administration, or by changers' or moneyers' guilds) but this remains very obscure.