material culture, of animals, the environment and spatial organization in the construction, reproduction and transformation of social relationships and cultural identities; and trying to identify the factors involved in the transformations of landscape, the development of the Neolithic, and the emergence of statehood.

Lastly, one of the remarkable features of French archaeology is the position of women. During the slow development of the field, the few key posts were held by men. But since the 1990s, most of them have been occupied by women, as if it was not until the job had become a proper profession that it opened up to both sexes. For example, the directors of the two most important archaeological laboratories, the CNRS (Center for Archaeological Research, closed down in 1997), and the team “Archéologies et sciences de l’antiquité,” created the same year, were women; the head of the largest collection in France of archaeological publications (the Documents d’archéologie française) is a woman; the editor of the most emblematic archaeological journal, Gallia, is a woman; as are the editors of the only international journal, Paléorient, and of the journal devoted to opinions and policy issues in archaeology, Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie (and, as such, symbolic of a peculiarly French trait).

In 1998—a quarter-century after the creation of what was intended to be a top-quality institution (the moribund National Center for Archaeological Research disappeared in 1997 without causing much reaction) and a few months before the publication of the parliamentary bill that would establish the first public agency responsible for rescue archaeology and archaeological research—for the first time in France, a laboratory was set up bringing together about 200 prehistorians, protohistorians, classical archaeologists, historians, and paleo-environmentalists. Admittedly, French archaeology had taken 150 years to become united and to acquire an institutional base, but today there is every reason for optimism.

Anick Coudart

See also

Africa, Francophone; French Archaeology in the Americas; French Archaeology in Egypt and the Middle East; French Archaeology in the Classical World

References

Journals: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française; Gallia; Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie; Paléorient; Techniques et Cultures.

Audouze, F., and A. Leroi-Gourhan. 1981. “France: A Continental Insularity.” World Archaeology 13, no. 2: 170–189.

Bordes, F. 1973. “On the Chronology and the Contemporaneity of Different Paleolithic Cultures in France.” Pp. 217–226 in The Explanation of Culture Change. Models in Prehistory. Ed. C. Renfrew. London: Duckworth.

Brun, P. 1987. Prince et princesse de la Celtique. Paris: Errance.

Cauvin, J. 1994, 1998. Naissance des divinités, naissance de l’agriculture. La révolution des symboles au néolithique. Paris: CNRS Editions, and Flammarion (coll. Champs).

Caylus, Anne Claude François (de). 1752–1757. Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques et romaines. 7 vol. Paris.

Chapelot, J., and J. Fossier. 1980. Le village et la maison au moyen âge. Paris: Hachette. (1985. Village and House in the Middle Ages. London: Batsford.)

Chapelot, J., A. Querrien, and A. Schnapp. 1979. “L’archéologie en France. Les facteurs d’une crise.” Le Progrès scientifique 202: 57–110.

Cleuziou, S., and J.-P. Demoule. 1980. “Situation de l’archéologie théorique.” Nouvelles de l’Archéologie 3: 7–15.

Coudart, A., and P. Pion. 1986. L’archéologie de la France rurale. De la préhistoire aux temps modernes. Paris: Belin.

Déchelette, J. 1931. Manuel d’archéologie préhistorique, celtique et gallo-romaine. Paris: Picard.

Demoule, J.-P. 1980. “Les Indo-européens ont-ils existé?” L’Histoire 28: 108–20.

———. 1990. La France de la Préhistoire. Mille millénaires, des premiers hommes à la conquête romaine. Paris: Nathan.

———. 1999. “Ethnicity, Culture and Identity: French Archaeologists and Historians.” Antiquity 73, no. 279: 190–198.

Durand, J.-L. 1970. Archéologie et calculateurs: problèmes mathématiques et sémiologiques. Paris: CNRS.

———. 1986. Sacrifice et tabou en Grèce ancienne. Essai d’anthropologie religieuse. Paris: La Découverte.

Gardin, J.-C. 1979. Une archéologie théorique. Paris: Hachette. (1979. Archaeological Constructs. An Aspect of Theoretical Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)