with the publication of Antiquités Mexicaines. The next decades, up to 1860, continued this early start, and from 1860 until 1914 France took an active role in the exploration and registration of archaeological sites in the Americas. The first half of the twentieth century saw a collapse of French archaeological research in the Americas, and it is only after 1960 that this complex history resulted in actual scientific and systematic studies of the American past.

Willey-Sabloff American research Bernal Mexican research French archaeology Proposed chronology
1492 Discovery Witnesses and historians Discovery Armchair studies Discovery Historians and collectors
1792 First archaeological discoveries in Mexico
1834 Publication of Antiquités Mexicaines
1840 Publication of Stephens and Catherwood’s book
1860 Explorers Explorers French Scientific Commission in Mexico Explorers
1914 Start of the stratigraphic revolution The classificatory period Mexican Revolution and Archaeological School of Mexico World War I: the end of the explorers
1940–1950 The institutionalization of archaeological research The collapse of French Americanism
1960 The first dissatisfactions The beginning of New Archaeology Starting anew: a rebirth of French archaeology in America
From Discovery to Antiquités Mexicaines

It took France some time to become interested in the discovery of the Americas. Like Great Britain, France was deeply entangled in its struggle against the Spanish king Charles V in Europe, and the existence of a new continent aroused only slight interest in intellectual circles, mostly among writers and artists. Writers such as Michel Eyquem de Montaigne or François Rabelais sometimes referred to the inhabitants of the New World; this interest did not amount to more than a mere curiosity for exotics and new artifacts.

As its political situation improved, France slowly paid more attention to the American continent. While corsairs plundered colonies and attacked Spanish fleets in the south, the arrival of Jacques Cartier in canada in 1534 marked the beginning of French colonial enterprises in that part of the world. Canada quickly became a French stronghold and would remain so for several centuries, but French settlements in Florida and Brazil did not succeed, and only a few scattered settlements in the West Indies were permanently occupied. These territories proved themselves, in many respects, much less attractive than Mesoamerica or Peru, and France quite naturally turned its attention toward the exploitation of economic resources, rather than Indian civilizations. Very few artifacts were taken away to be featured in the Wunderkammer, or Cabinets de Curiosités (collections of strange objects and precursors of museum collections), in France. Those that were featured there, as Pascal Riviale (1993) demonstrated, were usually classified as “naturalia” or “artificialia,” rather than works of art. From the very beginning American artifacts in France were assigned to the realm of natural history.