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Map of Saint-Denis crafts in the first millennium © UASD / M. Wyss, Th. Sagory
Archaeology has turned up a number of sources - vestiges of workshops, tools, and raw materials - that tell us in varying degrees about the craftspeople that worked in Saint-Denis.
The oldest such indication of production on the site of the basilica is a
pin-making workshop waste from which were found in a ditch from the last third of the fourth century ; from them, we can see the various stages in manufacturing pins from bone.
Craftsmanship in the Early Middle Ages was distinguished by a great mastery of metalworking. In the late sixth or early seventh century, belt buckles were mass-produced in a
founder's workshop located at the edge of the necropolis. Not far from this workshop, three smelting furnaces smelting furnaces reveal the existence of a forge, whose working life was probably short.
A waste pit, excavated to the north of the monumental complex, was found to contain scraps from a workshop that, around the year 1000, assembled or
restored glass-windows.
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