Clark Maines

The Virtual Monastery: Re‐Presenting Time, Human Movement, and Uncertainty at Saint‐Jean‐des‐Vignes, Soissons

The Wesleyan‐Brown Monastic Archaeology project (MonArch) integrates research results from standing remains, excavated material culture, and texts from the Augustinian abbey of Saint‐Jean‐des‐Vignes in northern France. The digital dimension of the MonArch project re‐presents the site through three‐dimensional reconstructions of its architecture, inventories of its material culture, and searchable encoded texts. The site employs a variety of strategies to engage the viewer/user in critiques of our knowledge representations. In this paper, we explore the ethical and analytic aspects of archaeological recording and present preliminary results of our work on representing time, human movement, and uncertainty.

Ground Penetrating Radar prospection at the charterhouse of Bourgfontaine

The charterhouse of Bourgfontaine was a major foundation, with approximately 24 brothers living in separate cells. An early modern birds-eye view of the monastery gives us a sense of its scale, but no details. Two GPR surveys (225 and 250 MHz) were carried out: the first, in the area of the chapel behind the church, the second, in a rectangular zone of 30 m × 50 m in the great cloister. All the data were processed as a 3D cube and the time slices corresponding to a depth varying between 0.7 m and 1.35 m give surprisingly clear evidence of regular structures. The superposition of the surveyed zone with a plan extrapolated from the engraved view is stunning, allowing for interpretation as three monastic cells and foundations of part of the great cloister. This is an excellent example of the ways in which geophysical prospection and archaeology can complement one another.

Centrality and Community: Liturgy and Gothic Chapter Room Design at the Augustinian Abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, Soissons

Square chapter rooms divided internally by four piers into nine bays are recognized here as centrally planned. The type seems to have been introduced in the mid-twelfth century, and to have predominated among the reform orders. A newly excavated chapter room of the nine-bay type at the Augustinian abbey of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes in Soissons provides evidence of centralized decoration, as well as a central plan. The abbeys unpublished customary permits the analysis of rituals that exploited this central focus.

Construction–Deconstruction–Reconstruction: The Digital Representation of Architectural Process at the Abbey of Notre-Dame d’Ourscamp

Virtual reconstructions have a number of aims. The first is to model existing structures and to provide a visualization—often for public consumption—that allows viewers to experience movement in and around the building. The second—and quite different—aim is a three-dimensional examination of a structure, frequently one that has been destroyed. The reconstructions of the late Manfred Koob and his team at the Technisches Universität at Darmstadt, for example, have been one of the models for our work. They have produced analytic reinterpretations of the medieval church of Cluny III and have digitally reconstructed several partially-destroyed synagogues, like the one in Cologne (Figs. 1 and 2). The synagogue reconstructions harness information technology in the service of cultural memory. In this second approach, the researcher is literally “rebuilding” the structure anew. Despite their contributions, the two marvelous examples of 3D reconstruction in Figs. 1 and 2 present only single phases of Cluny and Cologne, and this is typical of much digital reconstruction work. Buildings, however, usually have multiple phases—what we might call “extended cultural biographies.” Our work in archaeology and architectural history has focused upon the aspects of a building that change through construction, deconstruction, and rebuilding. Information on the evolving nature of buildings is usually conveyed through phased plans like those that we have published for the abbey of Saint-Jean-des Vignes in Soissons (Fig. 3). A plan, however, flattens the kinds of information