Cagny-l’Epinette (Somme Valley, France): thirty years of mixed data : potential and limits
Abstract
The Acheulean site of Cagny-l’Épinette (Somme Valley, France) has been excavated for thirty years, from 1980 to 2010, a period during which archaeological data recording and management were concerned by a gradual computerization. The constant evolution of practices has yielded a large amount of analogue and digital archaeological documents. Through the instance of the site of Cagny-l’Épinette, this paper proposes
a method to manage, consolidate and analyse diverse, sometimes incomplete, data, collected through different survey protocols. For the very palaeo-ethnological purpose of spatially identifying activities in the Acheulean levels, a methodology combining a Geographic Information System software (ArcGIS) with an Object Based Image Analysis software (eCognition®) has been applied to the comprehensive catalogue of available documents. This research constitutes the first known application of the (Archae)OBIA methodology on archaeological handwritten archives such as planimetric field drawings of remains.