Ornementation architecturale des Gaules – OrAG

The research works on architectural ornamentation in the provinces of the Roman Empire started in Italy, more than half a century ago, but recently in France. For lack of appropriate tools, the fragments of monuments have not been taken into considération. However, the recent results got Gallia Narbonensis, oldest conquest of Rome, and to a lesser extant, in Aquitania, show how important is the ornementation to understand the ways of transmission of political, cultural and religious messages sent by the official architecture. Those first results are the foundations which have allowed the researchs to be enlarged to the entirety of the gallic provinces, even if their preserved ancient monuments are scarce and the ornamented blocks usually out of context, as they come from Late Antiquity town-walls destroyed, during the 19 th century. These very numerous membra disiecta often are the only witnesses of the ornamentation of the monuments built during the first and the second century. To put these fragments into the middle ot the research works, dealing with the development of the Gallic-Roman towns, we have to conceive new tools allowing appropriate methodologies and kays of analytical, lexical descriptive and comparative readings to be proposed. For the purpose, we have to constituate a selection from previously published series.But that is not enough. In the same way, in view of a synthesis, we have to take into consideration the territory of the Gallic provinces through three relevant and unpublished collections belonging to Bordeaux, in Aquitania, Nîmes in Gallia Narbonensis, Mandeure in Gallia Belgica. Meanwhile, a new technology of the « measured drawing » of the ornamented blocks in accordance with the aims gone after, chiefly built on the 3D scanner techniques, must be proposed. The IRAA is a laboratory where architects, archeologists and « doctorants » have been working together on the ornamentation of ancient monuments for a long time. This laboratory is part of the « Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l'homme »(Aix-en-Provence.), garantee of excellence in all the aspects of computerization. It has partenered with the Université de Strasbourg, the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, and the Musée archéologique de Nîmes. All that, entitles the IRAA to lead and co-ordinate the project previously described.