French Historical Archaeology

Saturday, April 09, 2011

A few people have asked for my thoughts as to whether the new French book _Archéologie de la France moderne et contemporaine_ edited by Gilles Bellan and Flourent Journot (La Decouverte, Paris 2011) is worth having. I have no intention of giving a long formal review but here are a few thoughts.  It is  expensive (20.95 euros) for its size of 180 pages and 20.5 x 14.5 cms format  but is printed on nice paper with good colour photographs. It starts with a history of archaeology of the historical /post-medieval period in France (Renaissance onwards in French terms). It is basically a summary of recent excavations, survey and research undertaken by INRAP, the state archaeology service- this is statist France. It gives a good review of recent major projects some of considerable size which have occurred related to infrastructure developments from towns to the TGV rail. Some of the work such as the massive Louvre excavations and the digging up of the Grimsby "Chums" on the Somme (WWI members of the Lincolnshire regiment in which one of my grandfathers served) are well known. Other projects were new to me despite my serious attempts to keep up with French medieval and later archaeology. The book gives a good coverage of what is actually going on in the field and lab though outsiders might consider it uneven in its coverage. Thus recent work by INRAP on ceramics in Lyon and Marseilles are covered but not major work on ceramic production centres in western France supplying North America as the work has been done by other bodies. It should also be remembered that this period is still weakly represented within university departments. Another European problem is that landscape studies, for example, is interdisciplinary to the extent the work of historians, geographers and archaeologists is often difficult to distinguish either institutionally or by content.

The main sections of the book cover environment and landscape archaeology, urban and industrial archaeology, ceramics, transport and death. A section discusses archaeology and anthropology but is really a short  dialogue on the scope of 'modern' archaeology seen as the "science of man" (colonialism, humanity versus science, material culture). The books shows both the strengths and weaknesses of French archaeology. One cannot but be impressed by the grand scale of many of the open area excavation projects some of which no doubt produced hundreds of thousands of contexts. A great strength of the French system is their support of specialists in ceramics, glass, chemical and physical analysis, osteology etc which shows through in their contributions to this volume. This volume is a popular introduction so one would not expect it to delve too deeply into theory- the 'new' archaeology is briefly mentioned. However, an underlying  weakness is the French inability to engage with theory and a deep distrust of historical archaeology as practised in anglophone countries (even a francophone Canadian friend committed on this when I forwarded a recent French research agenda on ceramics to them) - despite the remarkable influence of French philosophers and social scientists in US and UK archaeology from Levi-Strauss to Certeau. Overall I would recommend it to anyone who can read basic French (and the pictures are good if you struggle) as a good guide  to recent French work and approaches and it has a useful bibliography. in fact it is the only general guide in book form. I would also recommend the 1998 exhibition catalogue by the archaeological museum of the Val d'Oise, _Aspects mecconus de la Renaissance en Ile-de-France_ edited by M. Depraetere & P.J.Trombetta if you can get hold of it- it is out of print. The same museum's two volumes on the medieval period in the same region are also a treasure. I spent a wonderful week exploring the Val d'Oise when I got too annoyed with the dog's breakfast organisation of the last (probably for all time) Medieval Europe conference in Paris. However, in my role as co-editor of Post-Medieval Archaeology we would love any overviews or discussion papers on historical archaeology as practised in France.