El-Hadi Khoumeri / Jean-François Santucci
(University of Corsica SPE CNRS UMR 6134, Corte, France)
We present in this article how, starting from a joint project undertaken at the University of Corsica with anthropologists and astronomers, the problem of the definition of the concepts of abstraction levels and views of space data was posed. The general objective of the project is to study the cultural and anthropological inheritance of Corsican territory founded on a space-time analysis of the studied territory; this analysis rests firstly on data-processing tools and concepts such as the Geographical Information systems and the Modeling and Simulation hierarchical of complex systems and secondly on concepts resulting from Semiology. Initiated in the year 2000 at the University of Corsica, the project is founded on a partnership between the data-processing team of UMR CNRS 6134 and an anthropology team from the LAMMI (Anthropology Laboratory of the Mediterranean and Insular World). This first work enabled us to highlight a whole set of problems at the time of handling the data space; anthropological, astronomical, archaeological and archeoastronomic (archeoastronomy is the science which relates to the discovery and the study of beliefs and the astronomical practices of the ancient societies; it is initially a tool to include/understand the intellectual achievements of the primitive cultures, such as for example, the builders of megalithic alignments). The solution that we propose for the preceding problems rests on a definition of abstraction levels for space data and concept of sights, as well as the definition of automatic transfer functions between abstraction levels. The implementation of the solution will be carried out by an oriented objects conception. The article will be organized as follows: in the second part we will clarify in detail the problems approached. In particular we underline problems raised within the framework of the collaboration between data processing and anthropology. The third part presents the basic concepts used to solve the problems highlighted in the second part. In the fourth part we describe how the preceding concepts are treated within the framework of an oriented objects conception. In the conclusion the short and medium term expectations are presented.