Awardees

This Amorce project is a continuation of an interdisciplinary project (2021) led by CCJ and CEREGE, which experimented with the use of 3D microtomography on various small Teleost bones (bony fish). The technique used offers precise virtual restitution of the bones, making it possible to obtain information (bone density, age and season of capture) difficult to detect otherwise, and necessary for the development of studies on the exploitation of fishery resources over the long term. The production of 3D models (CEREGE) of various skeletal elements has enabled us to move on to the phase of creating an interactive database, serving as an osteological atlas of various small Mediterranean and Black Sea species that receive little media coverage because they are modest and difficult to identify. Nevertheless, they are often on the list of species consumed by different communities over time, and can characterize the diet of certain social categories. The aim of the project is to create a didactic tool for students and researchers, and to increase the number of data sets of interest in several fields of archaeo-ichthyology and, more broadly, biology (anatomy, histology of skeletal tissues). It also enables us to validate a high-performance technique for replicating bones, whether they belong to a current repository or come from archaeological sites, if these have to be destroyed to carry out bio-chemical analyses.

At the crossroads of the humanities and computer sciences, the project is part of the resumption of scientific activities on a site which, after more than a century of archaeological research, now presents the remains of an exceptional architectural ensemble set in the heart of the Alpilles massif.

The Glanum site, which has long been studied by the IRAA, lends itself perfectly to the digitization policies of the French Ministry of Culture, and we recently obtained funding to produce a photogrammetric model of the entire site in its environment.

Driven by a dual interest - scientific and heritage - we propose to use this 3D model to lay the foundations for a set of digital tools designed not only for representation, but above all for analysis and the production of knowledge.

3D Web, virtual reality, augmented reality, model qualification, three-dimensional analysis, AI, ontology modeling, are the avenues we will explore in order to identify new perspectives for the dissemination and production of knowledge to be explored in the longer term as part of an ANR project.

Partner(s):

• Università degli Studi di Sassari (Italy)

The aim of the E-cclesia project is the intellectual development, documentary compilation and historical analysis of an original corpus of texts and images relating to the architecture and decoration of Christian monuments in the West. Exploiting this body of documentation will enable us to thoroughly revitalize our understanding of church building as a major cultural phenomenon, particularly in the Mediterranean region from the 5th century onwards.

The E-cclesia project is multi-disciplinary in nature, with a large-scale focus on the cultural phenomenon of church building. Its feasibility and success depend on the creation of an international network of researchers specializing in philology, art, epigraphy and archaeology, and working in a wide range of geographical areas.

The AMORCE application is dedicated to the creation and structuring of this vast network. Over the course of the year, the partners will be brought together for workshops, during which the planned methodology will be put to the test on a test corpus (concerning the basilica space), to formalize the general historical framework of the questions and take stock of the resources and skills needed to implement a large-scale project on this theme. It will also produce the first results demonstrating the effectiveness of the questioning and the legitimacy of the consortium to carry out an ambitious and innovative project.

Partner(s):

• Center de recherches historiques (CRH - EHESS - Paris)
• Center for Advanced Studies in Medieval Civilization (CESCM - Poitiers)
• Center Jean-Mabillon (École nationale des chartes - Paris)

This project aims at establishing a chronology for the chahar taqs, one of the most emblematic architectural innovations in the Antiquity in Persia. Most of these constructions which have been attributed to Zoroastrian fire temples in pre-Islamic Persia later became an inevitable element in the religious and secular constructions in Islamic world. Many of these structures were built during the Sasanian Empire (3rd to 7th century CE) and continued to early Islamic era. Their architectural evolution and their functioning are however, very poorly known. This project, inspired from a previous successful radiocarbon-based investigation on a Late Antique monument (Sarvestan, see attachment), will try to establish a radiocarbon chronology for many chahar taqs of the Fars region in SW Iran. The results will help to understand these unique innovations in the history of architecture. They will also help the historians and archaeologists to obtain a better image on the function and role of these structures in the cultural evolution of SW Asia during the Late Antiquity and the transition of Imperial to Islamic Iran in 7th century CE.

Partner(s):

• Environnements et sociétés de l'Orient Ancien Laboratory (ARCHEORIENT - Lyon)
• Shiraz University (Iran)
• Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna (Italy)

The CANARIAA project combines petrography, geochemistry and archaeology, with the aim of reconstructing the last route taken by the Paržine-Ilovik (Croatia) sized sailing ship. Preliminary results from the study of the rocks making up the ship's ballast have shown that this material probably originated on the Adriatic or Ionian coast of Apulia (Italy). A field mission will sample a set of Plio-Pleistocene calcarenites along the Puglia coast, whose petrographic, petrophysical (density, porosity) and geochemical (carbon and oxygen isotopes, trace elements) analysis will enable a comparison with the rocks in the ballast of the Ilovik Paržine wreck. This comparison will make it possible to constrain the location of the ballast sampling and loading site. This work, coupled with the results of the study of the cargo and ceramic furniture, as well as the analysis of the ship's structure, will also make it possible to hypothesize on the last route taken by the sailing ship and to constrain the estimation of the weight of the ballast and cargo.

The VRAK3D project lies at the crossroads of several disciplines: archaeology, architecture, knowledge representation, and is based on innovative technologies: computer vision, deep learning, virtual and augmented reality. Based on the observation that, while obtaining 3D models in the field of heritage is now virtually resolved and no longer part of the field of Research, the link between knowledge and geometry remains embryonic.

This project is divided into four phases around the Glanum site, which has been extensively excavated since the 1920s:

1. Development of a 3D model of the site capable of supporting the archaeological knowledge already acquired, as well as serving as a user interface to help generate new knowledge (drone and terrestrial photogrammetry).
2. Development and formalization of a corpus of archaeological objects using ontologies aligned with existing work in the community (CRM-CIDOC, for example). This formalization of knowledge will describe both morphological aspects and the relationships that these elements may have with each other. For example, the topological relationship between a capital and an architrave.
3. Research these objects using deep learning on all the photos taken to obtain the 3D model. The search for these elements includes a phase of labeling the objects on the photos (e.g. blocks, capitals, column shafts, architraves, etc.), then searching them on all the photos of the site, and finally a 3D localization using the orientations of the photos calculated by photogrammetry.
4. The virtual reality aspects of the project will be broken down into several faculties: virtual tour of the site (headset and web), interface with current knowledge (e.g. corpus, archives, bibliography), manipulation of corpus elements identified on the 3D model by satisfying relationship constraints defined in ontologies, partial and virtual anastylosis with geometric quantification of relationship relevance.

Partner(s):

• Università di Sassari (Italy)

Identifying species is a major challenge in archaeology in order to better understand the history of human/animal relationships. The recently developed ZooMS (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry) method enables this identification to be made, via collagen peptide analysis. Minimally or non-invasively invasive, ZooMS overcomes the limitations inherent in traditional archaeozoology, such as the fragmentation of bone remains, the lack of diagnostic anatomical criteria or the transformation of organic remains during operational chains. The PepT*ID project will develop this method within the consortium, and will address a number of scientific issues facing the partner laboratories, such as 1) distinguishing between morphologically similar taxa (caprini, antilopini, cervidae), 2) discriminating between unidentifiable remains, 3) identifying the animal origin of materials used by past societies to manufacture objects, and 4) ensuring the reliability of isotopic reference frames. The PepT*ID project, which is both diachronic and interdisciplinary, is also intended to generate a strong structuring effect within the host institute by offering workshops (English/French) for PhD students and master's students, thus contributing to the attractiveness of the training courses. The overall strategic objective is to initiate the development of new expertise as part of an Internationally-oriented Research dynamic (possibly leading to an application for a European Union grant).

Partner(s):

• Laboratoire Archéologie des sociétés méditerranéennes (ASM - Montpellier)
• Tunisian National Heritage Institute (INP)
• Marseille Proteomics Laboratory (MaP - Marseille)
• Urgonia Museum (Orgon)

The Epi2DAP project focuses on the automatic recognition of letterforms engraved on Cherchell's ancient inscriptions. With LIS expertise, processing will be applied to 2,000 digitized images from the CCJ photo library and the EpiCherchell Open Access database, to confirm and refine the dates proposed by epigraphists.

The establishment of a precise chronology based on character shapes, forms used and the evolution of wording, using a batch of archaeologically dated inscriptions, will enable us to anchor all the inscriptions in their historical context and thus enrich the history of the area. This attempt at unsupervised chronological serialization, applied to these unique and technically heterogeneous ancient images, will provide an "objective" classification of the writings, which will be submitted to the expertise of EpiCherchell epigraphists and specialists with a view to programmed publications.

A formalism for representing and querying the information produced will be studied. The aim will be to express the spatio-temporal relationships between inscriptions, and to integrate the analyses produced by HISOMA into the "Text Encoding Initiative" (XML/TEI) format. This innovative process will constitute a study model applicable to other corpora and scripts, and will serve as the basis for the Internationally doctoral workshop on digital epigraphy.

Partner(s):

• History and Sources of Ancient Worlds Laboratory (HISOMA - Lyon)

This educational program is dedicated to the discovery of daily life in Roman Gaul for schoolchildren (CP to CM2). Its aim is to make various aspects of ancient society accessible to children through their teachers. Based on 5 main themes (food, clothing, architecture, education, entertainment) and drawing on the collections of the Musée départemental Arles antique and the monuments of Arles, teachers will be provided with educational kits designed by researchers and their partners. These will include mediation tools such as models, facsimiles and various digital media (images, 3D, films, videos, interviews, etc.). These tools will draw on the expertise of AMU's laboratories in the field of experimental archaeology, with students invited to carry out a number of experiments themselves, in the classroom, relating to crafts and daily life in the Roman world.

The Archéo'EnvieS project is part of the A*MIDEX PATHWAy 2020-2022 program (Protohistoric to Medieval pastoralism in the Western Alps: the origins and development of long-distance transhumance), which is developing proven (archaeozoology, sedimentology, palynology) or innovative (isotopes, sedimentary DNA) tools for a systemic approach to the evolution of socio-ecosystems through the co-construction of pastoral practices and landscapes, over nearly 3,000 years, on both sides of the Western Alps. It proposes to create a set of games to raise public awareness of the evolution of agro-pastoral practices and the eating habits of societies from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages.