Dedicating an issue to the hygiene heritage may seem paradoxical when the notions of hygiene that are ours today seemed acquired for a long time. Yet, the eruption in 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic has brutally reminded us of the close links between health, cleanliness and hygiene. It is therefore particularly appropriate to gather the most recent studies on this field of hygiene heritage, considering it in all their cultural dimensions: historical, archaeological, technical, political-administrative, artistic, material and immaterial, without ignoring sociology and ethnology.
The ambition of this issue ofIn Situ is double: it aims to bring together the themes of the hygiene of people, the relationship to the body in its intimacy as well as those of the hygiene of the public space, while contributing to draw up an inventory of the places of the patrimonialization of the objects and constructions of this domain. For these purposes, the studies are based on a broad chronological approach – from Antiquity to the present day – in France (the call for contributions was only identified by French authors), in urban and rural areas, and concern both built heritage, architecture and works of art, as movable heritage, theories (legislation, communications) and practices.
The typology of the equipment is vast: networks of sewers, canals and piped running water, pits, tanks, fountains, standpipes, wash houses, baths-showers, swimming pools, water towers, bathrooms and bathrooms with their furniture, public toilets. The same applies to categories of sources, private and public, archaeological remains, objects and equipment themselves, paper archives (plans, technical drawings).
Around the common thread that is the supply of running water, a major vector of hygiene, the axes chosen in the light of the contributions selected are urban and rural hygiene facilities on the one hand, in which six contributions are included; architecture and objects of hygiene of the body on the other hand, which presents nine. Many of them address the issue of heritage.
In Situ. Heritage Review, published by the Ministry of Culture – Directorate-General for Heritage and Architecture, offers heritage professionals and researchers the opportunity to disseminate and promote the results of their work on knowledge, the conservation and transmission of works and objects for which they are responsible or are studying. Its ambition is to promote exchanges between the different actors and between the many disciplines that make up the heritage sciences. It shall make the knowledge thus produced available to the public.
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