Session: #435

Content:

Monuments constitute important material evidence of ancient societies that survive to this day. The analysis of their construction materials provides information not only on their erection, their chronology and the technical or aesthetic choices made by the builders, but also represents a wider insight into the societies that built or maintained them. In particular, major construction sites are ideal observatories of ancient worlds, due to the diversity of materials used: stone, plaster, mortar, wood, metal, stained glass, etc., and the financial means of their commissioners, who sometimes possessed certain resources, but also had to acquire others through the market. Finally, the implementation of certain building materials in their context, associated with their dating, can reveal social or religious practices and their evolution.
The development of archaeometric studies on all these materials over the last decades now makes it possible to accurately reconstitute the supply networks of these sites, thus providing information on the circulation and trade of raw materials, but also sometimes on their operating chain and manufacturing processes. In addition, certain materials such as wood record climatic variations and therefore also provide information on the reconstruction of past landscapes. These monuments thus provide access to a whole range of socio-economic, political and environmental knowledge and the joint and interdisciplinary study of different materials on the same monument and over a long period of time also allows fundamental comparisons to be made.
The fire at Notre-Dame de Paris and the restoration that followed mobilized researchers from all fields of research to address these issues on a single monument, whose remains are now widely available for archaeometric approaches. Beyond the example of the Paris cathedral, this session will be an opportunity to approach other monuments from the same angle in order to provide an interdisciplinary and diachronic vision of these questions.

Session: #435

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