This paper aims to explain the importance of preventive archaeology both in terms of protection and valorisation of cultural heritage. This is thanks to the wealth of data, mostly digital, that ...multidisciplinary activities related to preventive archaeology are able to provide. Preventive archaeology promotes scientific studies aimed to preserve the soil archives and entails studying past technologies, social and political relations, settlement processes and landscape. It also reveals the common cultural foundation that develops and transforms over time, and provides insight into how space, town planning, and the environment have evolved, as well as ethnic, cultural, and religious differences. The case study of Ugento, an important Messapian centre in the south of Italy, exemplifies how the application of innovative methodologies in preventive archaeology can result in the adoption of shared and smart urban and territorial planning instruments, notwithstanding the absence of overarching binding measures on the part of the competent ministerial authorities.
Structures associated with the management of clean water and wastewater played a key role in the general organisation of the establishments of rural Antiquity, a role that was linked to questions of ...hygiene but which has been misunderstood or ignored by research for a long time. The existence of more or less elaborate bathing installations has long since been recognised and published for the ‘pleasure’ villas or the pars urbana of the vast agricultural estates of the countryside in Roman Gaul, but what of the smaller agricultural sites, the farms that, after all, represented the essential part of aggro-pastoral activity? According to the agronomical authors of classical antiquity, the ‘hygienic’ virtues of an environment were determined by physical characteristics. Water, the soil and the air underpin the salubrity of a site and its general hygiene which is a condition sine qua non for a viable exploitation. Does preventive archaeology find evidence of the application of these rules in the different rural establishments, the small agricultural villas, that have been excavated to date? How did the farmers on these small exploitations manage their hygiene in general and at individual levels? Does archaeological evidence reveal traces of the implementation of the recommendations of classical authors? This article presents a selection of Gallo-Roman establishments which have been excavated over the past ten years in the eastern part of the Dijon agglomeration, part of the territory of the Lingones. It completes a more general synthesis to be published shortly by Frédéric Devevey, Valérie Taillandier and Chloé Duseau on the uses of water in the agricultural exploitations of antiquity in the Dijon region. This study was carried out in the context of the Rurland programme on rural landscapes in north-eastern Roman Gaul, co-ordinated by Michel Reddé between 2012 and 2017.
The planning of the territory in the last 40 years has contributed to the proliferation of global perspectives that allow us to propose a global interpretation of the partial realities exhumed ...through the works of preventative archeology. Geohistoric disciplines have provided answers that have allowed us to place space and territory at the centre of the cultural heritage problems of conservation and spatial planning. The selected texts appeared in Nouvelles de l’archéologie allow us to appreciate the evolution of these disciplines and the change in heritage paradigm that arises with the end of Modernity.
The research that has been carried out in recent years in the historical area of Timisoara constituted the context for conducting a sociological study regarding the perception of permanent residents ...and visitors of Timisoara, on these studies, both in terms of the legislative framework in which preventive archaeological investigations are carried out, their way of organization, but especially regarding their impact on the cultural heritage of the city. A separate category of subjects, individualized within the target group of the research, are the students. Our analysis follows the perception of 360 students, highlighting both their level of information and knowledge regarding the archaeological research carried out in Timisoara, but also their opinions regarding the impact and usefulness of this type of investigation for the cultural heritage and for the city of Timisoara. After analyzing the results, we could find that most students expressed themselves in favor of this type of archaeological investigation, perceived as necessary and useful, with an impact especially on local history, which should be restored and valued. The conclusions of the study are important in our opinion, as they reflect the perception of a significant category of the population, namely students (mostly young people, aged between 18-28).
In the EAC 2018 heritage management symposium, the idea was to look at the topic of development-led archaeology from a different angle and encourage discussions between heritage management officials, ...developers, archaeologists working in the field and the public. How can we meet the needs of these very different stakeholders and do we always need to? This topic was also highly relevant in view of the decision of the EU and European Parliament’s decision to make 2018 the European Year of Cultural Heritage with the aim of raising awareness as well as drawing attention to the opportunities offered by Cultural Heritage i.e. to reflect on the place that cultural heritage occupies in our lives. This themed issue reflects some of the topics covered by speakers from professional archaeology and cultural heritage spheres as well as representatives of the media and the general public.
The setting up of a mobile laboratory by a conservator-restorer within a collaboration with Inrap made it possible to respond to the needs expressed by archaeologists and metal furniture specialists. ...In direct contact with the excavation team, the presence of the restorer creates a favorable synergy to the research (determination of intervention strategies, participation in study and preventive conservation issues, sharing of knowledge). By following the operating chain of metal furniture analysis, from the field to post-excavation, the relevance and scope of this close collaborative work is illustrated by several examples from preventive archaeology.
In recent decades, numerous building archeology operations have been carried out as part of restoration projects on Historic Monuments. These interventions provide opportunities to experience the ...relationships between conservation-restoration actors on the one hand and archeology actors on the other. They reveal the difficulties that can persist at different levels of the operating chain, but also the interest of jointly exploring the specific questions of each discipline and the heritage benefit of a collective approach.
The archaeology of disability is a relatively recent and little-known approach in France. While the study of palaeopathology now goes hand in hand with funerary archaeology and osteoarchaeology, the ...French study of disabilities and disabling pathologies remains marginal and unevenly treated, depending on location, chronology and researcher’s interest. This paper focuses on highlighting the compatibility between this new research area, the obligations of osteoarchaeology, and the benefits of developing a national, diachronic, and interdisciplinary study. A database is designed within an interpretive, consensual framework, that can be adapted to overcome limitations and promote open-minded research on the care of the disabled in their own communities. A preliminary category selection of disabling pathologies has been made. These are trepanation, completely edentulous and/or compensating denture, neuronal impairment, severe scoliosis, Paget's disease, Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis (DISH), rickets, dwarfism, infectious diseases, unreduced fracture, amputation, severe degenerative disease and others. This list has been critically reviewed by experts in the field; it will evolve in a somewhat Darwinian fashion. Our database is hosted on the Huma-Num platform, with a management interface and quick access based on multiple tabs. The data includes information about archaeological operations, subjects, and pathologies; it is complemented by pictorial data stored on the Nakala platform. The development involved creating a prototype using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, and PHP, with features to display, add, modify, and delete operations and subjects. Enhancements have been made, including search optimization, charts, and the ability to export data in CSV format. The database, whose administrative interface can be accessed at archeohandi.huma-num.fr, contains so far 211 existing operations with a total of 1232 registered subjects spread throughout metropolitan France. These initial data reveal numerous research perspectives in osteoarchaeology that can be combined with other research topics, such as virtual reality.
In France, the archaeological sector has undergone a major shift in the last 10 years in terms of digital data creation and management. The digital transformation of the profession and its practices ...is still in progress and is not uniform. If general policies and laws are now clearly adopted at a national level, then institutional or individual situations are more complex. We can clearly separate the development-led and academic sectors, with reference to the volume of data produced and the challenges faced. A critical overview of the barriers highlights the fact that, beyond technical issues, data management (specifically sharing) is a human challenge in terms of scientific priority and in the adoption of new practices. This article gives an overview of the main questions and issues with reference to major nationwide initiatives.
This article traces the evolution of the practice and regulation of preventive archaeology from the early 1980s to the present day. It attempts to highlight its scientific contribution, through its ...results and methods, and reviews the legislative and regulatory changes that have taken place since the law of 17th January 2001, which gave it its legal framework. While the trajectory and development were very positive until the early 2000s, the competitive nature of the excavations in 2003, which was not reviewed by the 2013 White Paper on Archaeology, creates a risk of dispersion and loss of archaeological data. To overcome this difficulty and make objective use of the scientific data accumulated over the past forty years, it is essential to strengthen the modalities of collaboration at the national level. The implementation of shared tools (Open data) giving access to archaeological information that is currently scattered among operators and a strong inter-institutional collaborative policy should contribute to achieving this objective.
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