Heritage and digital humanities. Crossed views between archaeology and conservation-restoration of cultural goods

The growing impact of digital technologies on heritage data concerns both those resulting from archaeological excavations and those resulting from monitoring the condition of works in a museum context. Based on current research, Christophe Tufféry and Grazia Nicosia, two heritage professionals, will discuss several aspects of the impact of digital technology on the various stages of the work of archaeologists, as well as on the documentation and material conservation of heritage. This dialogue will address, from scientific and operational angles, the conditions of production and use of data relating to archaeological and museum heritage.

Christophe Tufféry (Inrap) and Grazia Nicosia (Louvre Museum) are both currently doctoral students at CY Cergy Paris-Université in the framework of the EUR "Humanities, Creation and Heritage", in partnership with the Institut national du patrimoine.

Christophe Tufféry is a geographer and archaeologist. Since 2010, he has been in charge of survey and recording techniques and methods at the Scientific and Technical Department of the Institut national de recherches archéologiques et préventives (Inrap), a national public operator in preventive archaeology under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Research. His research themes focus on the methods and techniques of archaeological and topographic field surveys. Since 2019, he is a PhD student at CY Cergy Paris University in the framework of the EUR Humanities, Creation and Heritage, in partnership with the National Heritage Institute. Based on his own experience as an archaeologist and the observations he has made and continues to make on the archaeological operations of Inrap and other scientific partners, he is developing a historiographical and epistemological reflection on the modalities of descriptions, notations, recording, and their evolution under the influence of computer science since the 1970s and 1980s.

After completing a double degree in museology and conservation-restoration, Grazia Nicosia specialized in preventive conservation. She worked for many years as a freelance professional before joining the preventive conservation department of the Musée du Louvre in 2015, where she is responsible for managing the contract for monitoring the state of conservation and maintenance of the permanent collections and historic decors, in the context of programmed operations in collaboration with the departments. Currently a doctoral student at the EUR Humanités, création et patrimoine de Paris Seine, she is conducting research on the diagnosis of cultural property in conservation-restoration in the era of digital humanities. This research aims to refine the ontologies of the field, by structuring the data resulting from the diachronic condition reports carried out in the framework of annual monitoring campaigns. His work reinterprets some fundamental concepts of conservation-restoration, such as those of alteration and reference state, as well as the notions of change of typology and scale.

The collective u2p050, currently housed at the Gaîté Lyrique, will propose an original and alternative mode of presentation of Christophe Tufféry's results.