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Over three centuries after the 1711 discovery in the choir of Notre-Dame in Paris of a square-section stone bas-relief (the Pillar of the Boatmen) with depictions of several deities, both Gaulish and Roman, the blocks comprising it were analyzed as a symbol of Parisian power, if not autonomy, vis-à-vis the Roman Empire. Variously considered as local, national, or imperial representations, the blocks were a constant object of admiration, interrogation, and speculation among antiquarians of the Republic of Letters. They were also boundary objects – products of the emergence of a Parisian archeology dated from 1711. If this science reflected the tensions and ambiguities of a local regime of knowledge situated in a national context, it also helped to coordinate archeological work between different institutions and actors. This paper would like to assess the specific role played by the Pillar of the Boatmen as a fetish object in this process. To what extent could an archeological artifact influence this reshaping of urban representation, this change of scales? By following the three-century career of the pillar’s blocks as composite objects, which some have identified as merely stones or a column, it is possible to understand the multiple dimensions that defined the object as archeological – as an artifact that contributed to the relocating of the historical city center – and the multiple approaches that transform existing remains into knowledgeable objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many ways of covering a surface. This paper describes the solution adopted for a prototype of an archaeological excavation shelter in Bibracte, France. A nexorade or reciprocal frame system covered with fabric has been designed by French architect Paul Andreu and French engineers Bernard Vaudeville and Simon Aubry (RFR first stage and T/E/S/S second stage). The shelter was built in 2008 and is currently in use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]