The Madrague de Giens ship : A photogrammetry from the past: Completing the study of an exceptional roman wreck

International audienceIn 2019, thanks to a grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, the Centre Camille Jullian team has undertaken a project in order to complete the study and publish the iconic excavation of the Madrague de Giens wreck, almost fifty years after the first dives on the site. Indeed, if the first campaigns have been published in a monography in 1978, the data from the last five years of excavations remain either unpublished or scattered in various articles.The resumption of the study therefore corresponds to a collective will to publish an important and unseen part of the documentation while seeking to complete both the study of the cargo and the reconstruction of the ship. First of all, it was necessary to carry out a complete study of the small ceramic material, which had not been studied in depth previously, beginning with the crew belongings to end with the important quantity of tableware transported alongside the amphorae. In parallel to this ceramic study, it seemed necessary to precisely relocate all these discoveries on the wreck in order to perceive specific areas within the cargo, dedicated to certain amphorae or to other goods, as well to distinguish particular spaces on the ship such as the kitchen, characterised by the discovery of several fragments of a bread oven. In order to improve this recontextualization we have produced a GIS including all the elements of the cargo, which is based both on the documentation of the time, but also on a new 3D photogrammetry of the wreck calculated from the stereophotographic coverage done during the excavation. It is this same photogrammetry that should allow us, in the end, to complete the architectural study and to reintegrate the cargo into the final 3D reconstruction of the ship