Programme

ARTEFACT

The first aim of the ARTEFACT programme is the physical and digital inventory of archaeological finds related to musical instruments and sound devices of Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Each year, with international universities, national museums and regional archaeology services, it carries out missions that review collections of unidentified objects in order to recognise and inventory musical finds. It also turns to objects that are already known but missing from digital inventories.

Its teams carry out digitisations and metrological surveys. They enrich digital collections and make them accessible to all, in particular through the PAN Portal created by the PRIAE in 2022. New technologies sometimes allow a fresh look at these objects that are thousands of years old.

The programme also carries out fieldwork and diagnoses, designs interactive and immersive mediation devices for museums, and produces, through experimental archaeology, highly accurate facsimiles for research, for playing music, or for exhibitions.

The missions

The SWAN mission is devoted to the inventory, study and promotion of aerophones, the wind instruments, from Antiquity to the Renaissance: trumpets, flutes, ocarinas and their fragments, recovered in excavations or held in collections.

The ARC mission is devoted to the inventory, study and promotion of chordophones, the stringed instruments, from Antiquity to the Renaissance: lyres, harps, rotes and their remains, recovered in excavations or held in collections.

They entrusted us with their collections