A river with a story: development of a specific methodology to study the ancient Senne river in Brussels

In July 2015 a rescue excavation took place to recover the remains of a previously unknown ancient branch of the Senne river on the site of Tour & Taxis in Brussels (Belgium). Such a large-scale excavation of a river branch required the development of a specific approach, where the close collaboration of archaeologists and many natural science specialists showed to be a crucial factor. Multiple logistic and scientific challenges were met to accurately document and correlate the river and the traces of human activities during the salvation operation. In order to cope with these challenges a protocol was elaborated focussing on the realisation and geoarchaeological study of multiple sedimentary profiles across the river bed, the excavation of the archaeological features and structures related to the river management, and an extensive sampling campaign for the natural science specialists (geoarchaeologists, archaeozoölogists and archaeobotanists). This resulted in a large and varied dataset, permitting to document the evolution of the river bed and the impact of the management activities, but also to reconstruct the surrounding landscape (De Cupere et al., 2017). In the spring of 2019, the remains of the medieval harbour in the historical center of Brussels were discovered during construction works. This instigated the largest rescue excavation in Brussels where the stakes were high: documenting the evolution of the river, understanding the impact of the embankments, but also documenting the progressing urbanisation and its impact on the river in a very limited amount of time (Ghesquière et al., 2024). Armed with the experiences of the previous salvation operation, a large-scale operation was conducted, following an adapted protocol. The present contribution intends to discuss how the experiences of the two large-scale rescue operations forged our research framework for tackling comparable contexts in the future.

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