Department of Archaeology/ Ancient Near East

On n'a pas tous les jours vingt ans ! Depuis sa création en 1999, l'Association pour la Promotion des Recherches sur l'Âge du Bronze s'emploie à structurer les activités et à réunir les chercheurs travaillant sur cette période, en France comme en Europe occidentale. Ce colloque anniversaire est l'occasion de revenir à Bayeux, lieu de sa création, et de proposer une rétrospective des actions de l'association, mais également de porter un regard sur l'évolution qu'a connue la discipline durant cet intervalle. Comment se sont renouvelées les méthodes et les pratiques ? Quelle perception avons-nous aujourd'hui de l'âge du Bronze et quels problématiques et enjeux doivent être envisagés pour demain ? Ces questionnements seront déclinés en plusieurs sessions thématiques couvrant l'ensemble des domaines de recherches emblématiques de la période.

The Holy Cross Church in Dalby (Sweden) dates back to the 11th century, making it one of the oldest stone churches all across Scandinavia. The appearance of the original church has been discussed by the research community for about a century. The main aim of this study is to determine which of the many hypotheses regarding the first phase of the church is the most likely, what might have been the reason for its major alteration in the 12th century, and how digital methods – particularly 3D – can improve and aid building archaeology. The study consists of four parts. In the first one, excavation trenches close to the church are reconstructed from drawings in 3D-GIS and put in relation to a 3D model of the church derived from a laser scan acquisition of the entire building that was performed in 2013. It is an innovative way to assess and revisit old excavation material by recomposing vertical and horizontal 2D documentation accurately. Based on the results of the first part, other archaeological documentation, measurements from the 3D scan and literature, 3D reconstructions of the three most important hypotheses are created in the second part and are compared to the 3D scan of the church in order to validate them geometrically. An interactive reliability map of the reconstructions was created and made available online. The last two steps comprised the spatial exploration of the reconstructions and an examination of the potential of structural analysis through FEM (Finite Element Modelling) for building archaeology. It was possible to determine which hypothesis is the most likely, and that the alteration of the church in the 12th century might have been due to structural reasons. The study clearly shows that 3D methods can considerably enhance building archaeological investigations, and that FEM is a very promising method.

Traditionally, building archaeology is conducted by creating and interpreting 2D documentation, even though the spatial properties of a building are not fully expressed in 2D. The third dimension has been mostly neglected, due to technical limitations that can be overcome through the rapid progress in 3D technology. This study shows how a 3D GIS can be applied from the outset of a building archaeological study to create a three-dimensional information system connected to a geometrically accurate 3D model of a structure. The building under investigation was Lund Cathedral (Sweden), whose long and complex history has been studied for two centuries. Gaining an understanding of all interventions, as well as managing the heterogonous datasets, is a challenge. In order to overcome these difficulties, various datasets and their relevant metadata were imported into the ArcGIS software and linked to a geometrically accurate 3D model of the church, placing all pieces of information in their correct spatial position. Thus, data that was previously impossible to view simultaneously and in the same space can be displayed together, creating a unique holistic oversight of the available material. Through the flexibility and versatility of the system, information can be displayed and queried at will, as well as updated continuously, greatly facilitating interpretation and making it an important resource throughout the entire building archaeological study.

This track of the SHREC 2018 originally aimed at recognizing relief patterns over a set of triangle meshes from laser scan
acquisitions of archaeological fragments. This track approaches a lively and very challenging problem that remains open after
the end of the track. In this report we discuss the challenges to face to successfully address geometric pattern recognition over
surfaces; how the existing techniques can go further in this direction, what is currently missing and what is necessary to be
further developed.

The Holocene vegetation history of the northern coastal Arabian
Peninsula is of long-standing interest, as this Mediterranean/
semiarid/arid region is known to be particularly sensitive to climatic
changes. Detailed palynological data from an 800-cm alluvial
sequence cored in the Jableh plain in northwest Syria have been
used to reconstruct the vegetation dynamics in the coastal lowlands
and the nearby Jabal an Nus¸ayriyah mountains for the period
2150 to 550 B.C. Corresponding with the 4.2 to 3.9 and 3.5 to 2.5
cal kyr BP abrupt climate changes (ACCs), two large-scale shifts to
a more arid climate have been recorded. These two ACCs had
different impacts on the vegetation assemblages in coastal Syria.
The 3.5 to 2.5 cal kyr BP ACC is drier and lasted longer than the 4.2
to 3.9 cal kyr BP ACC, and is characterized by the development of
a warm steppe pollen-derived biome (1100–800 B.C.) and a peak of
hot desert pollen-derived biome at 900 B.C. The 4.2 to 3.9 cal kyr
BP ACC is characterized by a xerophytic woods and shrubs pollenderived
biome ca. 2050 B.C. The impact of the 3.5 to 2.5 cal kyr BP
ACC on human occupation and cultural development is important
along the Syrian coast with the destruction of Ugarit and the
collapse of the Ugarit kingdom at ca. 1190 to 1185 B.C.

Les fouilles syro-belges de Tell Tweini, entamées en 1999, ont pour but d‘étudier l'histoire du site dans son contexte syro-mésopotamien. Cette recherche archéologique et historique s‘intègre dans un programme d‘études interdisciplinaires qui a pour but de récréer l'environnement dans lequel les civilisations du Levant se sont développées. Située dans une zone de contact entre le monde Egéen et le Nord de la Mésopotamie, la ville antique de Tweini, probablement Gibala possède une importance historique et culturelle considérable.

Public buildings reflect the investment of social resources and are usually interpreted as the embodiments of political, social, religious and economic power. The architecture of such buildings is often especially devised to reflect the performance of this power, incorporating a symbolism that served as a signpost for a particular social order. This symbolism was especially carried by monumentality and enhanced by scale, location, decoration, materials and visual impact. By making particular use of the natural landscape and the artificially created environment, the monumentality of public buildings helped to improve social cohesion and legitimated a particular societal system. Moreover, their intergenerational use gave such buildings great potential for communication and remembrance, especially during specific ceremonies. This volume is the reflection of an international conference which brought together specialists from two sides of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Near East and the Aegean, two areas that interrelated at different levels and at different moments during the Bronze Age, in order to examine how public architecture was used within this process.