than the sixteen chairs of archaeology in Germany at the same time.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, excavations and publications proliferated. The French conducted various activities in Greece and Asia Minor as well as more extensive work at the major sites, Delos (1873) and Delphi (from 1892), which yielded a rich harvest of monuments, inscriptions, and sculptures. Even though the main publications, such as the Corpus for inscriptions, were in the hands of the Germans, the French were certainly present in the field of epigraphy, architecture, and sculpture. In the twentieth century, and especially after World War I, archaeological investigation spread to Crete and the Minoan question (at the site of Malia) and to the northern Aegean at the site of Thasos. The results of these excavations were published in the Bulletin de correspondance hellenique, which was launched in 1874, and also in works specific to each site. The part played by the architects resident at the Villa Medicis in Rome in all this archaeological activity in Greece should be noted, for it was they who had to draw and reconstruct the ancient sites and monuments discovered by the archaeologists, especially the French.

Whereas the French School of Athens had been almost exclusively a school of archaeology since the 1870s, the School of Rome did not follow the same pattern. From its foundation, it was defined as a school of history and archaeology and included medievalists as well as ancient historians. The ancient history section was not allowed to take part in excavations on Italian soil, with the exception of the Etruscan site of Vulci. The French were equally as interested in Rome as they were in Etruria, and Jules Martha wrote the first Manuel d’archéologie etrusque et romaine in 1884.

Archaeology in Africa followed in the wake of military conquest and it was either members of the army (such as Captain Delamare in Algeria) or the church (Father Delattre in Carthage) who were the first to start excavating in these new French territories. Then scholars from the School of Rome carried the torch: Stephane Gsell worked tirelessly in the field in Algeria, organized museums, and wrote a history of Roman Africa. The interest in Africa by French archaeology lasted until decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s.

The structures that were set up in the nineteenth century still survive today and have left their mark on the landscape of French archaeology. Contemporary classical archaeology in France is strong in traditional disciplines (epigraphy, architecture, sculpture), although there is a renewal of centers of interest, and for a long time, the French were slow to apply technical or technological innovations (stratigraphy, analysis of materials, use of statistical methods), even though this gap has now been filled. Since the 1980s French archaeologists have been receptive to debates on archaeological theories, even though the profusion of research on these topics in the United States and England has been slow to spread to France.

French classical archaeology is the province of a great number of organizations, which, to a certain extent, are proof of its richness, and above all multiple sources of finance. There are three administrations involved: first, the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, which supports the Commission des Fouilles and institutes such as those in Istanbul, Damascus, and Beirut, which also recruit archaeologists. Then there is the Education Nationale, which supports the schools in Athens and Rome and the Casa Velasquez in Madrid, and last, there is the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), which supports teams working on projects. Research in the field is not directed or organized by an archaeological institute or the universities: the initiative is left up to academics or CNRS researchers to find financial support from the institutions listed above.

Just as there are several funding bodies, there are several training institutions. The universities play a crucial role, but other centers, such as the Collège de France, the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, and the Ecole du Louvre, also offer training in classical archaeology. This very diversity helps to give France a high profile in all archaeological disciplines and, in the classical field, a broad geographical presence extending throughout the Mediterranean basin, from Portugal and Morocco to Syria and Afghanistan.