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Sources and chronology of soluble salt formation in a medieval dovecote caught up in urbanisation: a resilience story?

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Abstract

The dovecote is one of the last two witnesses of the medieval history of the city of Créteil (11 km SE of Paris). Classified as a historical monument by the French Ministry of Culture in 1972, it was moved away from its original location the same year and restored between 1980 and 1987. Fifty years after its displacement, the dovecote still shows salt efflorescence on the inner and outer wall surface. The aim of this study is to determine the composition and the ancient or modern source of these salts and whether their presence is harmful to the preservation of the dovecote. A combination of low- to non-invasive methods associating microclimatic measurements, mineralogical, petrophysical, chemical and isotopic analyses on micro-samples with historical documentation are used to find the causes of salt enrichment and migration throughout and after the service life of this monument.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was financed by all the laboratories from their own funds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ Paris Est Creteil and Université Paris Cité, CNRS, LISA, 94010, Créteil, France

    Anne Chabas, Adriana Coman & Aline Petitmangin

  2. Direction des Laboratoires, BRGM, Unité Isotopes, BP 6009, 45060, Orléans cedex 2, France

    Wolfram Kloppmann & Guillaume Wille

  3. Laboratoire Chrono-Environnement, UMR CNRS 6249, Université de Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, 16 Route de Gray, 25000, Besançon, France

    Jean-Pierre Sizun

  4. Université de Paris, CNRS, ITODYS, 75006, Paris, France

    Sophie Nowak

  5. Institut des Sciences de la Terre de Paris (ISTeP), Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

    Erwan Martin

  6. Société d’Histoire et d’archéologie « Les Amis de Créteil », 94000, Créteil, France

    Marie-Ange Jurgens

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  1. Anne Chabas
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  2. Wolfram Kloppmann
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analyses were performed by all authors in their speciality. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Anne Chabas and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Anne Chabas.

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Chabas, A., Kloppmann, W., Sizun, JP. et al. Sources and chronology of soluble salt formation in a medieval dovecote caught up in urbanisation: a resilience story?. Environ Earth Sci 81, 550 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-022-10665-6

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