Utilisation de plans forestiers XVIIIe- XIXe siècles pour une étude archéologique des paysages passés de la forêt de Chailluz (Besançon) : l’exemple d’un réseau viaire

Abstract

Today Besancon has the highest percentage of green space per inhabitant among France’s largest cities (200 m2 per capita). 3/4 of it are made up by the Forêt de Chailluz (16.7 km2), a large forest which has maintained its present extent for over six centuries. This large suburban forest belongs to Besancon since the 14th c. at least. Interdisciplinary research has been carried out since 2009 to characterize the evolution of the landscapes of this forest in the past. Research combines archeology, history, geography and forestry and is based on a collection of archives and graphical documents (texts and old plans, current maps and photographs), a synthesis of academic work (historical and scientific publications and reports) and of information relating with the forest in general (technical, historical, floral, landscape data) on field observations (archaeological surveys) and on LiDAR data analysis ("Light detection and ranging"). Using ancient documents depends on their reliability: that of historical content they transmit and, for the graphical archives, that of the accuracy of the location information drawn in the geographical space. Moreover, the spatial location we may achieve today through GIS from ancient maps depends on the level of geometric precision of the archive and also on the quality of the georeferencing we can produce from the graphical source. This paper aims to present examples from the methodological choices made during the research to extract the information contained in 18th and 19th c. plans, information that is secondly put into perspective with other sources used for the study.

Keywords

• archaeology
• woodland
• LiDAR
• ancient maps
• road network