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