The backstage of Byblos' Roman theatre: new digital devices using information and communications technology (ICT)

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary research project that combines the fields of architecture and the conservation of the built heritage, history, communications and computer science. The study of new methods of experimentation will enable us to define and validate new orientations in the way we understand, structure and transfer acquired knowledge about a given architecturally significant complex.The aim of the project is to present the various experiences obtained during the interpretation of heritage spaces, and in particular intangible heritage, using information and communication technologies. More specifically, it involves acquiring, through ICT, computer modelling and archaeologists' accurate documentation, an understanding of the consequences of successive occupations of an archaeological site on its current condition. It also seeks to gain a better understanding of the construction techniques and know-how of the Ancients.The objective of this project is to introduce computer modelling, which is capable of showing the site's evolution over the centuries, in order to help us understand the superposition of historic layers.This work will reflect on how to respond to certain challenges using the example of the experiences acquired at the site of the ancient city of Byblos in Lebanon, a city included in UNESCO's World Heritage List. The Byblos project also helps to re-create and re-mould a monumental complex without having all the information and to test hypotheses that we would otherwise be unable to validate without compromising the heritage values of a site by physically reconstructing it. Such a compromise was experienced in the case of the Roman theatre of Byblos (A.D. 218) which, in the 1930s, was moved and rebuilt by the sea by archaeologist M. Dunand.