2024

The ambition of the NOFUN project is to bring together an interdisciplinary team to consider the causes, modalities and archaeological manifestations of non-funerary treatments of the deceased, by studying on the one hand those deceased who did not benefit from funerary rites, and on the other those who benefited from funerals but whose remains were the subject of positive or negative post-funerary treatments - two types of situation that risk being confused in an archaeological context.

It comprises five problematic axes that question the articulation between the treatment of the corpse and the consideration given to individuals: 1. non-funerary deposits within funerary ensembles; 2. rituals for transforming a non-funerary burial site into a sepulchre; 3. delayed funerary calendars; 4. Funeral treatment in the absence of a body; 5. Post-funeral treatments. The aim here is to mobilize all the criteria and methods developed by archaeothanatology, which will be confronted with historical and anthropological sources to propose new interpretative reading keys. Eventually, an ANR project will be submitted.

Partner(s):

• Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives (French national institute for preventive archaeological research)
• Laboratoire d'archéologie médiévale et moderne en Méditerranée (LA3M - Aix-en-Provence, France)
• Archaeology of Mediterranean Societies Laboratory (ASM - Montpellier)
• Laboratoire De la Préhistoire à l'actuel : culture, environnement et anthropologie (PACEA - Bordeaux)
• Interdisciplinary Research Center for Human and Social Sciences (CRISES - Montpellier)

For the past ten years, a team from CCJ, LAMPEA, CEREGE and IRAA has been studying the Galermi aqueduct, which has supplied the city of Syracuse and its surrounding area since ancient times. The peculiarity of the system is that it runs entirely underground, some 28km in length, and has been modified over time to ensure its continued existence.

After studying the layout diachronically and multi-disciplinarily, the team concentrated on the topographical survey of the gallery, in particular thanks to the 3D survey. But the exercise is limited by the irregularity and dangerousness of the pipe, which is often clogged and submerged at various levels. It has to be run dry, and some parts are inaccessible to humans, even though they could be covered by a drone.

The aim of the CCJ's collaboration with ISM is to initiate a first collaboration with robotics researchers to identify suitable tools for prospecting and surveying in underground and submerged environments.

The VIGUEIRAT project aims to exploit a batch of environmental and archaeological data acquired between 2022 and 2023 on an unpublished Roman site recently discovered in the Marais du Vigueirat nature reserve, between Arles and Fos-sur-Mer. Geoarchaeological and archaeometric analyses will be carried out to characterize the relationship between Roman-period man-made structures (5 ha of pebble pavement, delimiting a 40 ha site) and a paleochannel of the Rhône, active in ancient times, whose layout and geometry evoke the famous Marius canal, designed according to sources to link the Gulf of Fos to the river, avoiding the sandy mouths of the delta.

The analyses will be decisive for the interpretation of the site, which is not obvious on the basis of archaeological data alone. They will complete the corpus of results acquired since 2020, with a view to the first scientific publications in national and international journals. The aim is to produce 1) an initial assessment of the site's state of knowledge, as expected by the archaeological community; 2) a synthesis integrating the cumulative results of geomorphological (core drilling) and geophysical analyses of the paleochannel and its environment, on the eastern edge of the Rhône delta. Finally, the Vigueirat sector will be one of the case studies selected for a more ambitious project.

Partner(s):

• Image, City, Environment Laboratory (LIVE - Strasbourg)

The study of archaeological organic matter (AOM) remains an analytical challenge, not only because of its wide variety in terms of chemical nature and biological origin, but also because of its often complex original formulation and capacity to degrade. In the age of Big Data and AI, the automated processing of samples of this type, which generate complex data sets during their analysis, is a necessity. In this context, metabolomics, the most recent of the "omics" sciences, is the analytical approach of choice, as it offers a holistic vision both at the scale of each sample, aiming to study the entire metabolome, and also at the level of the panel of samples analyzed, through a global and automated study.

This project aims to develop metabolomic approaches applicable to various analytical techniques (GC-MS, LC-MS, SFC-MS) and specifically dedicated to archaeological samples (resins, sediments, bones...) from ongoing projects by the various partners (IMBE, CEREGE, LAMPEA). It will also help federate skills in molecular archaeometry at regional level.