History of the project

The first idea for a ‘Project for a Historical Atlas of Ancient North Africa’ was conceived in 2007-2008 by Claude Briand-Ponsart and Yves Modéran of the University of Caen Basse-Normandie - CRAHAM, with the aim of meeting scientific and educational needs through a work of around 200 pages, organised thematically, with a description of each map, and produced in partnership with the University of Sousse.
Another idea, the ‘Salama Project, cartography of Roman Africa’ by Luc Lapierre, at the time of the CNES Sports and Cultural Association, archaeology section, which became ACT (Archéo-Cartographie Toulouse), was first considered at the end of 2007 with an ambitious Wikipedia-type operation. In 2009, it will take a much more reasonable form with the Salama_SIG project, which essentially consists of digitising the Salama map and linking it to a basic database, with a default topographical base map.
Jehan Desanges, as a member of Aouras, introduced Luc Lapierre to Yves Modéran, who wanted to see how the projects could converge. Regrettably, Yves Modéran died in 2010.

In 2016, following a number of previous exchanges, Claude Briand-Ponsart asked Luc Lapierre, at the Sousse archaeological conference, to set up a collaborative project to map ancient North Africa and the medieval Maghreb. The project was born under the name AFRICAE (Latin plural, because it includes two major periods) and its beginnings were presented at the 2017 Sousse symposium. During this conference, Azzedine Bechaouch asked that the project be limited to Antiquity. At his request, it then became the AFRICA project.
From 2020, the AFRICA project will gain new strength by bringing together specific applications developed with the Centre Camille Jullian (CCJ), on the initiative of Katia Schörle..
In 2022, thanks to Michel Dabas (AOrOc), the AFRICA project began to be implemented on the Chronocarto portal. The necessary IT developments were carried out by Yadh Riahi (Yebni/AOrOc).
The project opens on Chronocarto in December 2024 and returns to its original name, AFRICAE, with the plural this time denoting all the Roman provinces of Africa covered.

Project management : Luc Lapierre , Katia Schörle, Claude Briand-Ponsart

Initialisation
Luc Lapierre has defined his architecture and initialized it with the maps published in 2010 by Brepols in the book by Jehan Desanges, Noël Duval, Claude Lepelley and Sophie Saint Amans, often referred to as the new Salama, supplemented for the area not covered in Algeria by the historical map by Pierre Salama. The initial work on ancient Morocco is being carried out in the same spirit. Other sites have already been included in the project as a result of collaborative surveys and studies.

The database
Structuring the database required a lot of discussion.
The first level provides a summary description of the entities. These are the primary tables. For example, for a site, we find : the list of ancient and contemporary names, the label displayed on the map next to its symbol, a short description, information about its position on the map (archaeological, approximate, according to which source, etc.), current geographical data (country, administrative structure), its existence on a traditional map (e.g. : Salama, new Salama). Roman roads are shown and often appear in red (indicative route) and only for a few today, with more precise routes as a hypothesis in purple or archaeological in green.
A second, much more detailed level consists of secondary tables. For sites, these will be the following (ok for those already defined) : Ancient names (ok), Ancient locations (ok), Literary sources, Statutes, Institutional structures, Site buildings (ok), Inscriptions (ok), Economic activities, Religions, Historical elements, Presences (ok). It is in these secondary tables that we find dating and presences. Presence is to be understood in the following sense : Numidian, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, etc. Presences can be defined for a site, with their dates, if known, in a separate secondary table.
Then there are cross-tables : bibliography and documents, soon to include access to public data from NAHAN (North African Heritage Archives Network). Intermediate tables provide links to the various features represented on the map : sites, site buildings, milestones, track buildings, tracks and isolated buildings.

AFRICAE, a collaborative project contributing to the development of knowledge of ancient North Africa through two collaborative modes : the Chronocarto portal and GIS. It makes extensive use of spatial imagery for historical studies and archaeological research, while providing them with a geographical context.

Partners
Archéo-Cartographie Toulouse (ACT) : https://www.act-archeocartographie.org
Centre Camille Jullian (CCJ) : https://ccj.cnrs.fr
Société d’études et de recherches sur l’Aurès antique (Aouras) : http://www.aouras.org
Société Française de Photogrammétrie et de Télédétection (SFPT) : https://www.sfpt.fr
AOrOc : https://www.archeo.ens.fr

Links
Luc Lapierre (ACT/Aouras/SFPT/AOrOc) : https://www.archeo.ens.fr/Lapierre-Luc.html