This year, the
bill on preventive archeology, i.e. emergency or salvage archeology
before building work causes the remains of the past to disappear,
has been the subject of much debate. Through this special issue of
CNRS-Info, the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
would like to raise awareness of the role played by CNRS and the contribution
made by many of its researchers to preventive archeology.
Are
there researchers and teaching researchers in preventive archeology?
The answer is, of course, yes. They were committed to this discipline
well before it became organized institutionally with the setting up
of AFAN ("Association pour les fouilles archéologiques
nationales", Association for national archeological digs) in
the late nineteen-seventies. We might recall the famous Pincevent
dig undertaken as an emergency salvage operation in 1964 by André
Leroi-Gourhan, or the pioneer work by a team of researchers who, as
early as 1974, began implementing a program of systematic digs in
quarries in the Aisne valley before quarry activity was started. Today,
alongside the leaders of the AFAN project, researchers have earned
their place in preventive archeology. They are highly specialized,
and preventive digs can benefit from their ability to make strategic
choices quickly, to organize work with a multi-disciplinary scientific
outlook, and to continue the work through publication. Indeed, it
is most often the Regional Archeology Services, or the scientific
assessment commissions they work alongside, that call upon researchers
to provide their expertise-whether applied to the Paleolithic, to
Neolithic dwellings, or to Roman towns. In addition to general archeologists
who are specialized in a particular period or region, there are also
specialists in Earth Sciences and Nature who, over the years, have
become essential partners in preventive digs: geomorphologists and
geoarcheologists who examine the sections and the trenches to analyze
stratigraphic successions, to understand how the landscapes fit into
place, and to mark the locations where thick alluvial deposits still
hide unknown relics; naturalists also reconstruct the plant and animal
environment on the basis of plant and bone remains; date physicists
and specialists in ancient metallurgy; anthropobiologists, biologists,
and biogeochemists: All are researchers specialized in the complex
relationships between humans and their environment.
But
researchers and teaching researchers do not merely respond to requests
for help. Preventive archeology has brought with it fundamental changes
in the practice of archeology, and researchers can no longer do without
this particular archeological approach. This is why some choose to
take control of operations in the field. A change of scale has come
about: road and rail layouts, quarries, airports located out-of-town,
parking lots, and urban development schemes have given access to land
and depths that were previously inaccessible, and knowledge of certain
little-understood periods of our past has been transformed. It is
thanks to preventive digs that previously-unknown Bronze Age farms
or High Middle Age hamlets appeared. Urban areas also benefit from
this salvage archeology, as was true of the excavation of the Greek
and Roman port of Marseille or the Jardins du Carrousel at the Louvre.
It is thus mutual interest that brings researchers to preventive archeology.
They can offer their skills as specialists, and they can find data
on a large scale that they could not obtain otherwise.
The
following articles are far from representing all of the action taken
by researchers and teaching researchers in preventive operations.
Rather, they propose a meaningful sampling of this action, with examples
chosen from all periods, from the Paleolithic to the XVIIIth Century.
However, it would be too restrictive to mention only digs in the home
country of France. Although less frequent, preventive archeology is
developing abroad. It is most often carried out in connection with
bringing large dams into service.
Several
articles show the contribution made by researchers in the natural
sciences, and also the quantity of new data that preventive archeology
generates in their fields. One text illustrates the way in which researchers
incorporate these results in major French or European programs. The
last article, which concerns archeometry, builds a bridge spanning
the past, present, and future: it shows how, on the basis of ancient
metallurgical waste found during preventive operations, it is possible
to study ancient metallurgy, to conduct research into the natural
aging of materials, and to produce promising materials known as nanomaterials.
Some
will observe that the major concern of academics and researchers is
to seek ever-increasing multi-disciplinarity, and deeper interaction
between the various players in preventive operations. They consider
it essential to have effective participation in the entire operation,
from design to publication. To encourage such multi-disciplinary co-operation,
and such pooling of skills, the CNRS and university laboratories are
increasingly allowing the heritage curators of the Regional Services
and the archeologists of the AFAN who so desire to become associate
researchers. A balance between programmed research and preventive
operations must still be established-but that is another story.
Françoise
Audouze
Conception du numéro hors-série Recherche et archéologie
préventive,
Centre d'études Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen
Âge,
Centre de recherches archéologiques,
Maison de l'archéologie et de l'ethnologie René-Ginouvès,
Nanterre.
