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This paper revisits the tensions between conservation-restoration and archaeology through the common subject of their practice: the object. A brief overview of the history of the relations between these two disciplines, originally associated, suggests that it is the change in the heuristic status of the object that led to a division of the tasks. Whilst archaeology tends to submit the materiality of the object to issues of contexts and environments, giving it the role of a prompts for interpretations, conservation tends to approach the object as a bundle of material indexes. This division between the construction of historical discourses and material production of knowledge ends up giving the work of conservation a subaltern position. Instead, the paper suggests that conservators, in addition to restoring the object materially, also restore the centrality of its materiality in the production of archaeological knowledge.

Southeast Asia is characterised by its great environmental, linguistic and cultural diversity. The large number of islands and the dispersed resources have favoured the ancient emergence of extensive networks to exchange these scarce goods. Maritime nomads, now marginalised, played an important role in the creation and functioning of these networks. Until now, there have been few attempts to identify and trace the evolution of maritime nomadism in the archaeological record, partly because of their supposed 'archaeological invisibility' due to the poverty of their material culture. It is only during the second millennium AD that the historical record sheds light on the role of certain nomadic groups in the creation and maintenance of merchant states.There is no simple definition of maritime nomadism in Southeast Asia, which is characterised by a great diversity of economic and political organisations. This diversity is expressed through routes, livelihood strategies, trade goods and modes of interaction with land-based groups and wider trade networks. In this paper we attempt to define this nomadism, discuss its origin and propose ways to understand its archaeological dimension.

The department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Musée du Louvre (DAO) houses an important photographic archive which illustrates the work of French archaeological missions in Iran from the end of the XIXth to the 1960’s. The analysis and valorization of these photographs allow a valuable historiographic study to better understand past excavations and clarify or sometimes correct previous scientific results. Susa, in southwestern Iran, is a fundamental site in the comprehension of the history of ancient Iran. This paper shows how the DAO photographic archive can help in the reconstruction of archaeological contexts through examples from Susa.

Under the impetus of Jean Capart (1877-1947), Belgium gradually rose to importance on the international Egyptological scene in the early 20th century, with the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels (RMAH) as its epicentre. The famous Egyptological library of the museum certainly was a defining factor in this development and is still considered to be one of the finest and most complete Egyptological libraries in the world. Besides books and journals, this library also houses an important photographic archive of more than 53.000 non-digital items. This paper deals with the large sub-collection of almost 7.000 historical glass plate negatives that are kept in this research archive and that are currently being studied in the framework of the Sura project. This collection documents the pioneering years of Egyptology in Belgium from the perspective of Jean Capart and his collaborators. The core of the collection consists of images of the sites where Capart and his team conducted archaeological excavations on behalf of the RMAH and the Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, and from which objects entered the museum’s Egyptian collection. However, the collection is broader than this and also contains thousands of photos of other sites and monuments—many of them during excavations by other international or Egyptian missions—along with images of objects in various museum collections worldwide. The collection also offers a rich and varied picture of the Egyptian landscape, its fauna and flora, as well as the daily life of the Egyptian population during the first half of the 20th century.

This paper examines the issues surrounding the use of photography in scientific fieldwork and in the reproduction of archaeological objects at the beginning of the 20th century, using the example of Émile Espérandieu's excavations at Alesia, in the sanctuary of Apollo Moritasgus. Rather than drawings, the presentation of archaeological material was from then on done through photographic plates mounted by hand. The burden of proof is now placed on these photographs. Field photographs are generally relegated to the status of mere illustrations. The photographs are taken very retrospectively, and often give rise to artificial scenes, and also to commercial exploitation in the form of postcards. Documenting the excavation in progress remains the exception.

This paper presents the origins of French archaeological photography, which is linked in particular to the work of Jean-Baptiste Auguste Verchère de Reffye (1821-1880) within the Committee for the Topography of Gauls and the French Museum of National Antiquities in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

The history of Archaeological Computing is strictly linked with the progress in the field of descriptive analysis of archaeological materials. Central to the arguments developed in the paper is an examination of the relationships between advance in archaeological methods and theory and development of descriptive language used in computer applications. Starting from the lesson of J.-Cl. Gardin the paper will investigate the main steps relating to the problems of data formalisation in archaeology. Focusing on contextual approach to the interpretation of archaeological data, attention will paid to the role of computer application in representing and exploring the complexity of social behaviour hidden in stratigraphic datasets. The management systems for excavation data are seen as strategic instruments for realising the potential of the means of analysis and interpretation of contexts. In this regard, the problem of which standards to adopt in the definition of finds, in particular portable items, becomes central. The theoretical framework required in order to achieve this aim is discussed. A survey of various experiences realized by scholars in Europe represents the starting point for an assessment of present – day trends. Moreover, the paper discusses the most suitable criteria for the creation of dictionaries (structures for cataloguing) aimed at evidencing the functional aspects of portable finds, as an instrument for the best interpretation of contexts. References to recent developments in multidisciplinary, archaeometric, research aimed to detect the functions of ancient artefacts open new scenarios: a new challenge for descriptive analyses in archaeology.

Since the first dives of Honor Frost (1917-2010), pioneer of underwater archaeology from the middle of 1950s, this research field a priori dominated by men, quickly feminized until it transformed to a women’s field today. Half a century later, the development of this specialization, which has now become a real professional orientation, allows to observe and question this particular transformation. This paper proposes to trace the evolution of women’s role in underwater archaeology in France, from the 1950’s to the present day.

In the American Arctic, archaeoentomological and archaeobotanical research on paleo- and neo-Inuit hunter-gatherer sites has identified plant and insect remains that provide information on certain practices related to hygiene, food and space management in winter dwellings, and other uses. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of our combined analyses of archaeoentomological and archaeobotanical macroremains from the sleeping platform of a 14th century neo-Inuit winter dwelling at Cape Espenberg, Alaska. The analysis of invertebrates and plant remains from the fill and floor levels show a strong entomological and botanical signature of human activities. While the fill levels are characterized by insects and plants commonly found in the local environment, the floor shows a high concentration of invertebrates characteristic of organic rich spaces associated with plant species ethnohistorically known to have been consumed or used. These analyses reveal the potential of this method for the study of house spatial house management of semi-nomadic Arctic peoples.

This paper presents an assessment of archaeoentomological activity in France over the last twenty-five years and then proposes guidelines for its development. It carries out an inventory of the applications of the discipline and its contributions (1), analyses current practices, the potential and the needs in archaeoentomology (2), defines the major priority themes (3) and makes 4) proposals for the implementation of a strategy of a national strategy (4).

This paper analyzes the kiva, an architectural feature unique to Native American Pueblos to find stable criteria for identifying kivas in different Pueblo groups, at different periods. The second part traces the origin and typo-morphological evolution of the kiva. Follows an analysis of practices more focused on Hopi society. Finally, the paper outlines how the kiva bears and transmits a cosmo-ontological model.

This paper aims to analyze how Russian-Soviet archaeology of Central Asia raised in a colonial context and how this subject would be considered as a part of post-colonial studies. The study of Antiquity in Tsarist Russia and the USSR appears usually as being deeply contrasted with the traditional representations of archaeology built by the Western powers. This analysis will, however, show how postcolonial approaches can be successfully used in the field of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet archaeology in Central Asia. Following the recent “normalization” of the colonial history of the Russian and Soviet Empire, this papers proposes a comparative approach with the other European colonial situations, in order to highlight such themes as the archaeological activity of military, the political commitment of scholarly societies, the archaeological arguments justifying the conquest, etc. The post-Soviet archaeology should instead be considered under a more nuanced point of view through the context of the “affirmative actions” undertaken by the Soviet authorities with the purpose of creating the modern Central Asian nations. In the post-Soviet – and postcolonial – period, the highly politicized national research raises the question of the independence of the post-Soviet archaeologists. However, even if it doesn’t provide a definitive answer on the colonial or not colonial status of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet archaeology, this study aims to show how the Central Asian world can no longer be treated separately from the other colonial doctrines that marked the last two centuries of world history.

The rock art petroglyps of the White Sea represent possibly the earliest depictions of whaling in the world and allow us to understand the 6,000-years-old relationship between whales and human communities. This paper will argue that the complexity of this relationship is multifaceted and socially underpinned, and goes beyond simple killing of the whale. A number of strands in the interpretation of prehistoric images are explored: traditional indigenous knowledge; ethnographic and historical evidence; visual clues and archaeological interpretation of rock art. Hunting for whales required input from a number of individuals who did not deliver the killing blow, but without whom the whale could not be killed and fully appropriated. The whale itself can be seen as a visual localiser of community cohesion, the focus for community members and their practices (Janik 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020).

The paper discusses alternative explanations to hunting perspectives that have represented the most common explanatory framework when prehistoric whale images or other animal species are interpreted and explained within rock art studies. On the basis of iconographical examples of the Northern Tradition rock art of Norway, dated to the Late Mesolithic (approximately 6-7000 cal BP), it will be argued that complex rock art depictions that have survived for thousands of years still store past content that can be extracted to provide a deeper insight into how animals were understood in the past, going beyond the idea of whales purely as prey to be hunted.

Along the southern African coastal plain, human occupation is documented since the end of the Early Pleistocene. The archaeological, palaeoenvironemental and ethnographic records suggest that in these arid to semi-arid landscapes where inland resources are sometimes scarce, coastal zones were attractive to past human populations. Among the intertidal resources, stranded marine mammals are known to have been sporadically available from several million years ago and have been scavenged by human groups since at least the Middle Pleistocene. This appears to be a regional behaviour rooted deep in time. In this paper, we review the ethnographic and archaeological data related to stranded marine mammal scavenging from the Earlier Stone Age up to recent times and we discuss the specificities of this subsistence behavior in Atlantic southern Africa.

The disability studies in Egyptology is still a marginal topic, but it contains crucial information for understanding Egyptian society, in its best light and in its shortcomings. Our paper proposes to study the traces of disability, mainly through texts which evoke them from all periods. Thus, we will seek to find not only the perception of these fragile populations in their contemporaries’ eyes, but also to identify the reasons for their infirmity. Combined with observations on the archaeological field, the sphere of difference becomes a revealer of ancient behavior.

This paper looks at how instruments, animals or members of the household (slaves or family members) assisted in securing wellbeing and health for those facing the challenges of impairment. ‘Spontaneous’ yet hard to answer questions will be dealt with. Were wheelchairs, guide dogs, and ear trumpets in use in Antiquity? And how far did people identify with such aid, and recognised it as ‘being part of themselves’?

During commercial excavations, the archaeological department of Ardennes county council found two amazing discoveries that are now part of two different preservation projects. Firstly, a tool set from a rural settlement which holds some Vallus (Gallic harvester) teeth. The second finding was gallo-roman baths identified as being from a rural villa which were very-well preserved with an impressive wall elevation and a beautifully decorated floor.This paper gives the opportunity to discuss the moving of the finds from a commercial archaeological excavation to a preservation project which has to operate within the rules of the government, politics and economy as asssets or constraints for scientific issues.

This paper aims to develop a reflexive analysis on a subject of study in progression since the beginning of the years 2000. Focused essentially on Gauls, this article first proposes a definition of the concept of “religious (or sacred) landscape” and a state of the art. It demonstrates the topicality and the scientific consensus about this approach. Moreover, with the numerous actions in Gaul, sharing information and reflective analysis would benefit all. Nevertheless, this approach expects a national dynamic in order to standardize methods. Secondly, I tried modestly to raise the opportunities for renewal offered by the generalization of new tools in the spatial archaeology of sanctuaries (GIS, lidar, geophysical prospecting of large areas) but also by new concepts, promoting, for example, an archaeology of memory.

Archaeology has to face the ruins, any kind of the traces of the successive human cultures. From the beginning of what is called antiquarianism, preservation of the relics of the past is a moral and scientific necessity. This paper tends to explore the various dimensions of the notion of ruins in relation to our modern vision of the past.

On the occasion of the collection and first inventory of the archives of the “Cour Napoléon” excavations, it seemed essential to us to meet the actors of this unprecedented archaeological operation, in order to collect their memories and thus complete the “paper” documentation. After about fifteen interviews, we wanted to share four examples, showing how a profound human and social dimension emerged during these so well-known excavations.

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.

This paper provides a synthesis of current knowledge concerning the morphological and landscape evolutions of the French Atlantic and English Channel coasts of France during the Pleistocene and Holocene periods. These changes are compared with archaeological data in order to better understand the distribution of human settlements and the environmental contexts that explain their conservation or destruction.

Problems related to the standardization and communication of archaeological information were addressed long before the “digital era”. From 1972 to 1987, they interested the authors of the Dialektikê journal. This paper presents the technical choices made for the online diffusion of this journal. Its rediscovery contributes to the recent history of archaeology, about the relationship between French and English-speaking approaches, and about the relationship between scientific and political practices.

This paper presents an overview of means of valorization of pile-dwelling sites inscribed to Unesco World heritage list. Carried out on the scale of the Alps, this study aims to relativize the deterministic logics by which the invisibility of pile-dwelling sites would be an obstacle for their valorization. Also, with elaboration of decision-making grid, the study proposes a support tool for the local stakeholders.

Jean-Claude Gardin was one of the most influential French archaeologists from the second half of the 20th century, in France like abroad. His contributions to the formalization of data (descriptive codes) and the formalization of the reasoning (logicist analysis) were a pioneering work in the constitution of the theoretical and cognitive base of archaeology. This paper is designed to summarize the key stages of his production in the scientific and institutional context of this period, and to clarify the theoretical and practical contributions and limitations.

This paper deals with the illicit trafficking of archaeological objects looted in Greece during the current economic crisis. It focuses on the ways art trafficking is entwined with money laundering and tax evasion, namely the main consequences and challenges of the crisis for the European governments. It also highlights some cases with original interviews eg Yves Bouvier, CEO of Natural Le Coultre in Geneva free ports. Although known as the best in class among Unesco members regarding its legislation to fight art trafficking, “Switzerland remains one of the last countries where everything can be purchased with cash, i-e-without cap on cash payments” warns investigative journalist and a specialist in the Swiss banking system, Ian Hamel. Switzerland also shelters an undefined number of free ports (Geneva, Zurich and Bale free-ports being the best known) providing facilities to store, sell, ship or restore works of art, with a single key rule: confidentiality. Swiss born Yves Bouvier heads Natural Le Coultre, which is the largest private shareholder of Geneva Free port, with Geneva Canton being its major public owner. Natural Le Coultre is a worldwide leader in art transport and warehousing. Despite the crisis, the Geneva free port is fully occupied and has yet been enlarged. With the art market moving east, Yves Bouvier has invested in a Singapore Freeport settlement and still believes that Geneva is “bound to remain” a “crossroads of the art market”. Earlier in 2015, Yves Bouvier was investigated for fraud and money laundering. This suit is likely to raise legal interest in Geneva Free port trade practices. It also highlights what Jean Francois Gayraud, a writer and Police chief Inspector in France, calls “white-collar” crime. White-collar crime features criminals who are rich, and powerful, and who remain above suspicion. Their legal work position provides them with means to develop criminal activities at no risk, whereas blue collars criminals may be current economic crisis victims: eg Greek people living in impoverished conditions or unemployed people involved in illicit excavation and looting of antiquities in order to survive… As Neil Brodie, archaeologist and member of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow, puts it “I'd like to see full police investigations of the networks, knocking the principal players down.”

During the Roman Period, one can join the Rhenan limes through several routes from Lyon. These routes connect various large drainage basins together thanks to portages of which we do not always know the exact path. The purpose of this paper is to propose possible routes of transfer between the Saône and the Moselle basins. The method of inquiry involves two aspects. First, we have to determine the main terminal-points of navigation on the two rivers. Due to the lack of data in ancient texts, the sources used are recent works on the hydrology of the Saône and Moselle rivers, archaeological remains and modern texts. Second, we simulate routes between the proposed terminal-points: we can then distinguish two kinds of paths. On the one hand, there was a long portage, taking the Via Agrippa from Chalon-sur-Saône, on the other hand, there was a short portage departing much more upstream on the Saône river. The short portage could only be taken when environmental conditions allowed, whereas the long one was passable all year long. The modeling of the path of least cost between the various terminal-points sheds new light on the various possible options and the choices the transporters made during ancient times. It appears that the route of the portage depended not only on the topographical, river and climate constraints but also on the objectives of the journey and the commercial strategies of the merchants.

This paper provides an overview of the methodological practices used for the study of malacological data collected in archaeological context, from the sampling strategy to the methods of descriptive statistics enabling to analyse the faunal assemblages. Case studies from northern France and, more broadly, from northern Europe, are presented to demonstrate the interest of the malacological indicator for the reconstruction of palaeoenvironments at different spatial and temporal scales.

Around the circumpolar North, archaeologists and heritage managers are growing increasingly concerned about the destruction of archaeological sites due to modern climate change. This paper describes the Arctic CHAR project, designed to address this issue in the Mackenzie Delta region of northwestern Canada. The Mackenzie Delta is home to the Inuvialuit, whose rich history is recorded in many coastal sites. Due to permafrost melt and increasing relative sea level, these sites are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Arctic CHAR consists of two main components: survey to assess the condition of heritage resources across the region, and excavation of the most important threatened sites.

Quite a lot of military structures from the Paris defence system called “Camp retranché de Paris” developed during the First World War, are still preserved under the forests’ canopy in Île-de-France. In order to locate, characterize and protect those military remains (mainly trenches and gun batteries), Lidar technology has been used to scan Montmorency forest in Val d’Oise. This paper is about the methods used in this study (data treatments and recording of the topographical features) and unfolds the first results. Even if the contemporary military remains are at the core of the study, the whole archaeological features as well as the forest changes are touched on.

In the last fifty years obsidian provenance studies have become important in archaeology. Most of the time, an analytical characterisation is required to determine the origin of raw material. Recent advances in instrumentation offer a more flexible and rapid implementation of analyses. New challenges therefore arise for archaeometrists, archaeologists, lithicist, to integrate strategies for studying obsidian chaînes opératoires and analytical characterisation. Based on recent studies, this paper presents some statements on the current evolutions of research around the archaeometry of obsidian and the associated methodological challenges.

Recent developments in network theory have led to the creation of new models to describe spatial and social interaction and a reappraisal of existing models. Although designed with contemporary society in mind they are increasingly used by archaeologists to help explain the archaeological record. This leads to the problem that, with such a large range of models available it is likely that, if we hunt hard enough, we can find a model to justify whatever preconceptions we may have. In this paper we address this issue by re-examining the onset of centralisation in mainland Greek city states of the 9th and 8th centuries BCE. Pioneering work on this settlement structure was performed in 1987 by Rihll and Wilson, adapting a 'retail' model devised originally for 20th century urban planning. We highlight the problems of modelling archaeological data by contrasting this model to a recent cost-benefit model termed ariadne, developed by ourselves, and other simpler models. In particular, we examine what constitutes model 'robustness' and the way in which different models handle 'contingency' when describing periods of rapid change. In no way can we get what we want.

As archaeological applications of social network analyses mature, new approaches may be incorporated into the network analysis ‘toolkit’ for archaeologists. One potential area for analysis that has long been important in social network studies but to date has been virtually ignored by archaeologists is the study of local structure, the relations of nodes and ties within networks, particularly dyads and triads. With relatively sparse datasets most archaeologists have focused on macrolevel studies of entire networks, or else the roles of particular nodes in networks. Microlevel studies offer insights into the structural properties of a network and may provide bases for comparisons of network characters that would not be apparent from density measures or other macrolevel measures of connectivity alone. This paper examines the triad census and the related concept of transitivity and applies these concepts to a particular case study: the networks of archaeological sites with ties based on the co-presence of artifact types in peninsular Italy at the end of the Bronze Age. I demonstrate that microlevel studies such as the ones considered here can reveal new information about the structure of archaeological networks.

This paper explores the way cultural traits are transmitted between individuals, and the degree to which this is affected by the location, size and configuration of human settlements, as well as other aspects of the intervening landscape. Drawing upon case studies from the large Greek island of Cere, we first consider dialectal variants of variants of common words used in over a hundred communities across the island during the late 1960s. A commonly-proposed ‘neutral’ expectation is that different people’s choices about wich cultural traits they adopt can be treated as effectively radom, and our starting point is therefore a model of trait adoption in wich the relative probability that any new trait is adopted is based purely on the existing relative frequency of a particular trait of the overall Cretan population.Many linguists further highlight ‘isolation by distance’ as a reason for patterns of regional variation in dialect and this too can be assessed relatively simply. We then go on to combine both assumptions, frequency dependence and distance-decay, in dynamic network model of dialectal variation, before finally exploring whether variable terrain and off-island access provides additional greater explanatory power. Having explored this issues via detailed modern population and dialectical datasets, it becomes possible to consider archaeological datasets from Bronze Age Crete, where the evidence is far patchier but similar questions of the factors affecting cultural variability across the island are of great interest.

Exchange in the Roman Mediterranean has often been described with general network terminology, but rarely have the formal methods or theory of network analysis been applied to the archaeological evidence for Roman maritime interaction. Using case studies around the island of Cyprus, this paper addresses how network approaches might inform analysis of seaborne economic and social connectivity at different scales across the ancient world. The locations of opportunistic ports, and the cargo sizes and approximate durations of journeys represented by shipwrecks provide parameters for characterizing network activity: in this case the networks that linked communities beyond the major coastal urban ports into a highly regionalized maritime economy. This approach to network activity defines and emphasizes a regional scale as distinct from both local and long-distance activity. It raises critical issues about the structure and functioning of networks in light of the socioeconomic conditions and logistics of ancient seafaring, and it provides a framework for investigating the development of markets in the Roman maritime economy. Rather than revealing a single expansive and well-integrated “trade network” across the Roman Mediterranean, the approach here suggests multiple discrete regional and interregional networks centered on distinct products, ships, distances, agents, communities, and economic mechanisms.

Network analysis is both a method and a theory for exploring the relationships inherent in archaeological materials. In this paper, I direct attention to what may be the lowest-hanging fruit for archaeological network analysis: epigraphic materials. Epigraphic materials are replete with obvious and clearly visible social networks. In their archaeological aspect, further relationships can be discerned and distilled. I work through two brief case studies connected with Roman stamped bricks from the Tiber Valley, looking at both social and archaeological relationships. Network analysis may best be used not to prove a particular theory about these materials, but rather to generate new insights and new ways of reconsidering these materials. When more archaeological or epigraphic datasets become available, network analysis will become a regular tool in the archaeologist's data tool kit.