Preliminary study of the lime mortars of the architectural complexes of Nanteuil-en-Vallée : Contributions and perspectives for the understanding of the construction sites, from Gallo-Roman Antiquity until the French Revolution
Résumé
The abbey of Notre-Dame of Nanteuil-en-Vallée is a monastic site located between Poitiers and Angoulême (France). The site was dismantled during the French Revolution: the abbey church and part of the complex served as a quarry and as a source of building materials for the surrounding buildings, as evidenced by the many visible uses in the village.
Seven excavation campaigns carried out between 2011 and 2017 allowed archaeologists an important study of the monastic complex. Those archaeological operations have identified many phases of construction and occupation since the gallo-Roman antiquity to the present day.
An almost exhaustive sampling of lime mortars has been carried out within the structures accessible and observed since 2011. More than 200 mortar samples were therefore taken from the various buildings and masonry of all periods. The study of architectural binders and their comparison allows us to identify masonries and construction phases. But one of the objectives is also to observe changes or constancy in the practices, recipes and supply logic in the choice of materials for the manufacture of lime mortars. The work carried out in recent years at IRAMAT-CRP2A shows that lime mortar also provides chronological information by using Single Grain Optically Stimulated Luminescence (SG-OSL) technique.
In a first step, 14 lime mortar samples were taken for SG-OSL dating: 3 samples from the "Trésor" whose chronology remains problematic, and 11 from the masonries observed during the excavations of 2017 and immediately covered. These first samples will allow us to test the sensitivity of the grains and to consider, or not, SG-OSL mortar sampling on the whole stratigraphy in the nave of the abbey church.
In order to question the supply and the use of the building materials, the abbey of Notre-Dame of Nanteuil-en-Vallée gives us the opportunity to study the raw materials used in a large chronological sequence from gallo-roman Antiquity to the present day.