Françoise Audouze and andré leroi-gourhan (1981) called their contribution “France: A Continental Insularity,” emphasizing how separate French research had been from that of other countries. Yet there was nothing original about the work done in France after the time of Boucher de Perthes. French archaeology has been unique only in that more than half of its professional archaeologists have excavated abroad. Most of the excavations within France were conducted by amateurs, and archaeology in France suffered as the result of a severe economic crisis (Chapelot et al. 1979; Querrien and Schnapp 1984). At the end of the 1970s French archaeology received only about one-tenth of the funding that its counterparts in equally affluent European countries did.

In fact, for a very long time in France, prehistoric and historic remains were given no protection whatsoever if they were not monumental (well known and associated with known historical events); the public authorities were not even interested in them. Archaeological research was entirely free from any government control or protection until 1941, when the Vichy government issued the first law relating to archaeology (endorsed in 1945), at a time when part of France was occupied by the Germans. Under the law, excavations required authorization, chance finds had to be declared to the authorities, and the land on which they were found was “frozen.” This law was the first recognition of archaeology as a part of French heritage. However regional organizations, later established around a few “directors of antiquities,” were given virtually no resources to protect or conserve archaeological sites. Nothing in dreams or reality gave any indication of the radical changes that were to occur in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

The Upheavals at the End of the Twentieth Century

The first signs of change in the French government’s approach to archaeology came at the end of the 1960s, when two scandals, caused by clashes between archaeological authorities and powerful commercial interests, caused a considerable stir in Paris and Marseilles. These arguments reached the highest levels of government and the scandals had such an impact that a report was commissioned from Jacques Soustelle in 1974. On Soustelle’s advice, the Fonds d’Intervention pour l’Archéologie de Sauvetage (Intervention Fund for Rescue Archaeology) was established. In 1977, an article was added to the urban planning regulations stipulating that a building permit could be refused or issued subject to restrictions if the project threatened the conservation or enhancement of archaeological remains. But nothing was stipulated about how and by whom the costs of excavation or conservation were to be met.

In 1981, a “Department of Archaeology” was finally created to study, protect, conserve, and promote archaeological sites. Then, in 1996, France ratified a European Union convention (the Malta Convention) intended to “protect the archaeological heritage as a source of the European collective memory and as an instrument of historical and scientific study.” In ways that no one had foreseen, the number of excavations in France rose—from 720 in 1964 to 3,410 in 1995. France made up for lost time, and whole areas of national heritage were preserved.

The number of staff employed by the state to supervise excavations multiplied by 25 in 25 years (increasing from 10 in 1964 to 255 in 1988). Local authorities, who had not hired an archaeologist before 1971, employed 120 archaeologists in 1988. In 1989 there were 160 researchers working on French archaeological topics employed either by the national funding body for academic research, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), or by the universities. During the 1980s, significantly, major politicians began claiming a personal interest in archaeology. Heritage issues, often rather ambiguous ones—tied up with the effects of globalization on the national consciousness—came to play a key role in the budgets allocated by state and private enterprise to rescuing the archaeological remains that they were destroying. French president François Mitterrand, like the emperor Napoleon III and Marshal Pétain before him, started making references to the mythical ancestors of the French, the Gauls. In September 1985, he made a speech