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Centre de Recherche et d'Etudes pour l'Art Préhistorique Emile Cartailhac

 

ARIANE
DATABASE FOR PALAEOLITHIC ART

Design principle

     Unlike a traditional database that works on text fields, the design principle of our database uses images. Navigation works by clicking on specific areas of graphic documents in order to progressively narrow down your research (geographic map of Europe, national map, regional map, site map, topographic area map, panel, figure, etc). Thus it is possible to go on a virtual visit of each site while simultaneously having at your disposal all possible relevant information. The name ARIANE is a French acronym of this concept : Art Rupestre : Iconographie et Archéologie par Navigation Electronique - (Cave Art : Images and Archaeology for Electronic Navigation).

The architecture of the ARIANE database is shown in Figure 1. It waw conceived thanks to the programmation language Livecode¨ that functions on all systems (PC or Mac) and appears much more flexible that other commerial BDs.      Each site has one or more maps depending on its complexity and (as complete as possible) a set of images. This set depends on the availability of published documents or on the documents which researchers have put at our disposal.

Fig. 1

     Ideally, we would like to have data concerning all graphic information along with a wide range of photographs (wide angle shots, close-ups, details). Our software also allows the user to play videos although they are often still short and subject to copyright restrictions. Short texts or descriptions (extracts from publications or notices or even commentaries) are indexed for each image and hence make-up a form of reference. Furthermore, text-fields allow the user to access administrative and geographic information, bibliographies as well as short texts presenting each site and providing information on research being carried out and other data concerning pigment analysis, dates, the condition of the artwork, etc. Hypertext links allow the user to quickly cross-reference information and navigate from site to site.

See a series of screen shots showing the navigation mode from image to image, starting with a map of Europe until the image of a carved bison at the end of a cave in Bédeilhac in Ariège (fig. 2). Database « Palaeolithic Sites »      Furthermore, all major Palaeolithic sites in each European region (whether or not they contain Cave and/or Portable Art) have a specific reference note giving the major archaeological information (excavation history, stratigraphy, absolute datings, lithic and bone tools, fauna, seasonality, paleo-environmental data, etc). For sites with Portable Art, a direct access to the images is available as a database of Portable Art is also on-line.       Figure 3 shows a series of screen shots illustrating a database search in the Pyrenees relating to the cave of the Mas-d'Azil (Ariège).

Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Researching / Selecting

     As with any DataBase Management System (i.e. FileMaker® or Access®), a certain amount of search and selection criteria exist to help the user. For example, it is easy to obtain an author's bibliography or the bibliography for a site. Sites can be classified by region, by chronological period; sites can be found which have C14 datings of pigments and then be classified chronologically, etc.

As images are at the heart of the database, each image whether of Cave or Portable Art, is indexed using key words so that a search engine can immediately find all images corresponding to any given subject and thus allow the user to visualise and compare these images (see example fig. 4).

Fig. 4

Statistical tools

     In the case of a body of work established for a specific research within a specific subject, statistical tools allow the user to analyse formal characteristics, chronological evolutions and stylistic variations. The database than acts not simply as a way of compiling diverse information but becomes a true research instrument using the resources of Artificial Intelligence. The recent thesis by Raphaëlle Bourrillon (UTM) concerning female representations and Stéphane Pétrognani (Univ. Paris-I) regarding Ante-Magdalenian animal representations have benefited from the use of these powerful analytic tools that integrate Factorial Analysis of Correspondences with Ascending Hierarchical Classification and numerous statistical tests.

     It is worthy of note that the same panels made be subjected to different types of analysis by methods using Knowledge Discovery in Databases and Data Mining such as Rough Set Theory or Formal Concept Analysis. This work is made possible by using the SEMANA platform to which we actively collaborate with linguists from the Centre de Linguistique Théorique et Appliquée at the Université Paris-IV.

Extension to Spanish Levantine Rock Art

     Based on the same principle as the base ARIANE-Paleo, a database for the Spanish Levantine Rock Art has been elaborated in the frame of the project ANR PREHART.