on this theme at the top of Mont Beuvray—where Vercingetorix had been proclaimed “leader” of the uprising against Julius Caesar. At the same time, he granted the site, which had been dug in the nineteenth century by joseph déchelette, more generous funds for excavation and improvement than ever before in French research. The complete refurbishment of the louvre Museum, including the building of a glass pyramid in the center of the main courtyard, was another of the principal cultural endeavors of the Mitterrand presidency.

However, public authorities had to operate in a total legal vacuum as they attempted to force developers to contribute to the costs of rescue archaeology, amounting to 400 million francs per year nationally. This contribution was exacted on each occasion in return for the release of the land in question, following bargaining (which might be described as racketeering) based on the extent of the threat that the plans posed to the national heritage, and the legal obligation of the developers to preserve it. The funds were collected from the developers, with the backing of the Ministry of Finance, by a voluntary organization: the Association pour les Fouilles Archéologiques Nationales (Association for National Archaeological Excavations), better known by its acronym, AFAN. Between 1985 and 1989, AFAN’s budget increased from 30 million francs to 130 million. In 1990, it had more than 1,300 archaeologists working under contract, that is, many more than in all French research institutions put together.

Thus, in a country that had for so long refused to recognize that remains under the ground constituted part of its heritage, rescue archaeology made steady progress at the end of the twentieth century. It is estimated that, in the last twenty-five years of the century, it was the source of 90 percent of the data produced by French archaeology.

Archaeologists Resort to Public Demonstrations

By the end of the 1990s, in the absence of any law on funding rescue digs and of resources allocated by the state to its own services, developers were becoming less and less inclined to pay for excavations. Furthermore, since developers’ contributions were limited to releasing the land, analysis studies and publications of the archaeological material could not keep up. It looked as if there would be an inevitable division into two opposing types of archaeology. On the one side, field archaeology (de terrain) with abundant material and means but with little time to think about their findings, and on the other side, laboratory archaeology with little material and few facilities but with plenty of research time. This split deeply affected a professional community with a short institutional past. The archaeologists working on French sites—who had acquired their status only twenty years earlier—were still full of the utopian dreams and dynamism that drives any first generation of conquerors. It was at this point, in 1998, that the Ministry of Finance recommended that rescue archaeology be privatized and subject to financial competition. Archaeologists went on strike, occupied government buildings, opened museums and invaded television studios. In the end, more than a thousand archaeologists (over two-thirds of the archaeological community) demonstrated noisily in the streets of Paris against the government’s policy.

To deal with this crisis, an emergency committee with three members, including archaeologist Jean-Paul Demoule, was set up by the Ministry of Culture. A parliamentary bill on the funding of rescue archaeology and the creation of a new public agency were proposed, and the bill was passed into law and the agency created in 2001. At the start of the second millennium, French archaeology—both scheduled archaeology and rescue archaeology—is still united, employs 2,000 people, and at long last has the modern resources that it requires.

Nevertheless some questions remain: Why was there so little hurry to professionalize archaeology in France, and why has the country never felt a lasting need to investigate its origins? The answer lies in the vision that France has always had of its citizenship and culture, having for years looked for its past in the Parthenon or the Capitol rather than in the huts