The ancient city of Epomanduodurum (Mandeure, France) was excavated in several areas since 1970, leading to reports of differing quality and important quantities of unstudied artifacts. A recent analysis of metallurgical slags of these old excavations motivated a new evaluation of the reports, in order to establish the contexts of the material. This presentation aims to discuss the application of a methodology, set by Lefebvre, Rodier and Saligny (2008) for urban archeology, to extract usable information from old and heterogenous field documentation, which is mainly composed of descriptions and drawings. We created a database that enables the use of statistical tools (SQLite, R, Qgis) to integrate the spatial, temporal and functional dimensions, the latest being based on the archaeometallurgical analysis. These three dimensions are considered as continuous spaces, to overcome the heterogeneity of precision of the data without loosing any information. The synthesis allows to better understand the organization of the iron metallurgy, its evolution and its relations with the dynamics of the city. Here, incomplete and imprecise old excavation reports have proven themselves a reliable material to emphasize the structure of craft activities. This methodology could therefore be an efficient tool to synthesize multiples excavation reports and compare the result with other social or environmental data. (Marion Berranger, Rémy Jeannot)
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