On the trail of the Visigoths

For a week or more, Patricia, whom I know from Thursday French, and Mike have been camping on the site at Villegly, the next village to ours and we have been spending some time together.  Three of us went on a walk called Sur les traces des Wisigoths last week. In a local village near the start of the walk, we were accosted by a very enthusiastic man called Louis who had uncovered thousands of artefacts locally and created a museum to exhibit some of them.  He insisted that our walk to a necropolis of some 44 visigoth graves would be incomplete without a visit to his museum.  We were to call at his house on our way back and he would come and open up and give us a guided tour.
The graves are very impressive, dating from the 5th or 6th century and resting, as they mostly do, with their open mouths at ground level. There are large ones and small ones, and just so many it's astounding.

The largest, the sarcophagus from which now rests outside the museum

Mike and Patricia inside the church of Notre Dame de Lauzes

After the walk we stopped by Louis' house and he rushed out excitedly to tell us all about his findings. There was no end of fragments of Roman pottery and brooches, pins, door hinges made of bone (using the hole up the middle) and jewellery.

There were many amphora about one metre tall, used for selling wine and several miniature ones about 25 cm tall.  These rested in the neck of a full-size one and contained a sample for sales purposes.

 A pile of Roman coins was accompanied by an anecdotal tale of an old man who had discovered a treasure trove of coins which he kept in a large urn, and gave a handful each to three village women. I didn't gather how this particular handful came to be in the museum - it was hard to keep up as he was desperate to tell us as much as possible in a short time.