Awardees

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.

With the installation of exhibition panels on the Thaenae archaeological site (Sfax, Tunisia), combined with additional information on the web (GIS, virtual tour), this tour will enable visitors to discover the most remarkable Roman monuments on this major site, which is still little known to the general public (baths, houses, ramparts, towers, city gates and necropolises). An open day will inaugurate this interactive itinerary, and will feature a number of workshops (excavation tank, amphora reassembly, mosaic workshop...) and guided tours to introduce visitors to the site, as well as to the various professions involved in archaeology, and to highlight our recent scientific discoveries. Finally, a round-table discussion will bring together the various players in Research and civil society to inaugurate the virtual tour and discuss the site's future development.

Based on the case of the Orange theater, we propose to develop non-destructive techniques for identifying the quarries that were the source of ancient building materials, such as in-situ chemical analysis and physical measurements on the building and in the quarries, and also to consider ways of locating ancient quarries in a context where human activity and urban planning have most likely caused them to disappear. In addition to the application of earth science methods, we'll be looking at the economics of the construction site.

Partner(s):

• Interdisciplinary Center for Heritage Conservation and Restoration (CICRP - Marseille)
• Study Group on Geomaterials and Anthropized Environments (GEGENAA - Reims)

This project combines petrography, geochemistry, dendrology and archaeology, with the aim of reconstructing the last route taken by the Paržine-Ilovik sailing ship. The ballast will be studied and sampled in situ, then analyzed in the laboratory. The results will be compared with those obtained from petrographic analysis of the amphorae and dendrological analysis of the hull wood, log loading and dunnage.

During the restitution phase, the positioning of the ballast and the evaluation of the volume occupied in the hold will enable us to complete the hydrostatic study of the ship and propose hypotheses as to its trim before sinking.

Partner(s):

• Università degli Studi di Genova