The lyre-playing bard of Paule

Foreword

On 8 March 2018, in collaboration with the Service régional de l'archéologie de Bretagne, a PRIAE team led by Audrey Lecorgne and Julian Cuvilliez carried out a series of surveys of an exceptional sculpture in the round dated to the Late Iron Age. Discovered in 1988 by the team of Yves Menez and Claude Le Potier on the Gaulish aristocratic site of Saint-Symphorien in the commune of Paule (Côtes-d'Armor), this sculpture has attributes never seen before. It is a figure carved in a granitic stone of the meta-hornblendite type, probably linked to a sacred practice close to the cult of the ancestors. Beyond the exceptional nature of this discovery, part of a group of statuary probably linked to the cult of the ancestors, our interest lies above all in the attribute the figure holds in front of him, which is among the most remarkable representations of Gaulish instruments known to date. This seven-stringed instrument of the lyre type is mentioned several times in ancient texts and has countless similar (though less precise) representations on the obverse or reverse of Celtic coins and medals from Gaulish territory.

The aim of the mission was to bring together a multidisciplinary team and to examine this object through today's means and new techniques, in order to advance research on the music of Celtic Antiquity. First, we set out to produce a volumetric and photogrammetric capture so as to bring this heritage into digital inventories, making it accessible to students, researchers, professionals and audiences around the world.

The various high-definition surveys also made it possible to put forward new hypotheses about its possible functions, and about the reasons that led the Gauls, around 75 BC, to dispose of this prestigious cult object in a ditch, the equivalent of our rubbish bins today. This work also continued the research previously carried out by several researchers and experimenters (Tinaïg Clodoré-Tissot, Jean-Claude Condy, François Mozer) in the fields of ancient organology, musicology and experimental archaeology.

Finally, this work, which will be continued until 2023 through study days devoted to experimental archaeology, will also have made it possible to produce highly accurate facsimiles, allowing several museums to renew their interpretation and their displays.

The bust of the lyre-playing bard

This sculpture in the round was discovered in 1988 by the teams of Yves Menez and Claude Le Potier during a preventive excavation carried out ahead of a departmental road project at Paule (Côtes-d'Armor). It was found in a ditch dated to the 1st century BC. Now held by the Service régional de l'archéologie de Bretagne, this remarkable sculpture bears one of the oldest representations of a chordophone on French territory. Activity on the ancient site goes back to the 6th century BC and saw several changes and enlargements over the centuries. In the 2nd century BC, a fire led the inhabitants to rebuild the site, which was enlarged by several hectares. In the 1st century BC, the site became an oppidum, probably the seat of a powerful aristocratic family. The site was apparently abandoned after the defeat of Vercingetorix, after which Vorgium was built on the site of the present town of Carhaix.

The mission

Phase 1: metrological analysis, creation of a digital database

Carry out a series of surveys with today's means (photography, digitisation, photogrammetry, measurements) in order to enrich the database.

For this, we were able to count on the partnership of the Centre de Ressources Techniques de Morlaix, which provided a Nikon Krypton scanner, and on the participation of two of its metrology engineers: Gaël Bourbouze and Sabine Raguénès.

3D digitisation

Before this mission, this remarkable heritage, which bears one of the oldest representations of a chordophone in France, had never been surveyed digitally in 3D or by photogrammetry.

The aim of this new PRIAE mission is to capture its volume digitally with a new-generation scanner (Nikon Krypton) combined with a high-definition photogrammetric survey, in order to create a highly accurate 3D document for researchers and for public engagement.

This method creates a digital copy of an object using a scanner. It first enriches digital databases, making the work of researchers and students around the world easier. The 3D document preserves the geometry of the object digitally, and even its colour when combined with photogrammetry, which proves invaluable when artefacts deteriorate (naturally, through vandalism, etc.) or are stolen or lost. The 3D document also opens up many possibilities for public engagement: online virtual museums, technological mediation modules such as holograms, or the production of facsimiles. Here, the digitisation will be carried out with the Artec™ Spider scanner and will capture the geometry of the object, which is essential to our study.

Digital traceology

High-definition digitisation revealed details invisible to the naked eye.

The Celtic lyre

The lyre motif is frequent in ancient iconography, particularly on coins and ornaments. However, representations of this size and nature are almost non-existent, making this sculpture the most remarkable representation of the bards' instrument discovered to date. What sets it apart further is that, unlike the representations on coins, where the lyre appears among independent symbolic elements that do not belong to the same reality, here the bust shows an instrument in context, in clear interaction with a figure.

Team