After World War II, the number of archaeologists working on the later prehistory of the Maghreb increased dramatically. Some (R. de Bayle des Hermens, G. Camps, H. Camps-Fabrer, H.J. Hugot, J. Tixier, G. Souville) were trained professionally by Lionel Balout, who replaced Maurice Reygasse in 1947 as the professor of prehistory at the University of Algiers and established the Centre de Recherches Anthropologiques, Préhistoriques et Ethnographiques (crape) at the Bardo Museum in 1952 following the Second Pan-African Congress of Prehistory held in Algiers (Balout 1952; Roubet, Hugot, and Souville 1981).

Abbé Jean Roche, a student of Teilhard de Chardin and Breuil who also worked with camille arambourg, Henry Vallois, and Vaufrey, was one of the first to reintroduce fully modern methods of excavation and analysis. His work on the Moroccan Epipaleolithic period at Taforalt and other sites (Roche 1963) was exemplary and, despite continued research and cataloging of sites in Morocco (e.g., Souville 1973), has little competition for innovation and thoroughness.

Avocational archaeology also continued. Among the best practitioners was Jean Morel (1896–1981) who published eighty-eight papers on the prehistory of the Maghreb between 1946 and 1981 (others appeared posthumously), several of which were methodologically innovative and/or theoretically sophisticated and whose critiques of work by others was always thoughtful (e.g., Morel 1974, 1978a, 1978b, 1981).

In 1955, Balout published his magisterial Préhistoire de l’Afrique du Nord, essai de chronologie, which became, and to some extent remains, the standard reference work on the prehistory of Africa. Balout also established the journal Libyca, which became the preferred publication venue for reports on Maghreb prehistory (although publication since the mid-1980s has been problematic). Gabriel Camps, who succeeded Balout at the University of Algiers and crape, encouraged a number of younger archaeologists (including Ginette Aumassip, Claude Brahimi, and Colette Roubet). Camps conducted a series of important excavations at sites in Algeria and the Sahara (e.g., Camps 1968), often in collaboration with Henriette Camps-Fabrer (e.g., Camps and Camps-Fabrer 1964), who was responsible for two major reports, Matière et art mobilier dans la préhistoire Nord-Africaine et Saharienne (1966) and a monograph on Medjez II (1975). In 1974, Gabriel Camps published a sequel to Balout’s 1955 treatise, Les civilisations préhistoriques de l’Afrique du Nord et du Sahara, which integrated what was then known from chronometric dating with the vast quantities of archaeological, paleoenvironmental, and paleontological data amassed since the 1950s (see Camps 1975).

Among the younger generation of French or French-trained archaeologists, several stand out: Ginette Aumassip, for a long series of investigations on the Saharan Neolithic (e.g., Aumassip 1973, 1980–1981); Claude Brahimi, for his brief but influential research on the Iberomaurusian (Brahimi 1970); Danilo Grébénart, for his reassessment of Relilai and other sites in the Tebessa and Ouled-Djellal regions (Grébénart 1976); Jacques Tixier, for his systematization of Maghreb lithics (Tixier 1963, 1967); and Colette Roubet, for her interdisciplinary work on the Neolithic of Capsian tradition (Roubet 1979). To these, we can add the research of a small number of archaeologists not trained in the Francophone tradition: Antonio Gilman (1975), David Lubell (Lubell 1984, 1992; Lubell et al. 1975, 1976, 1982–1983, 1984), and Peter Sheppard (1984, 1987). Algerian archaeologists more recently educated in France and Algeria have begun to publish in the journal Libyca (e.g., Ferhat 1984–1986; Hachi 1982– 1983; Heddouche 1982–1983, 1984–1986) and elsewhere (Sahnouni 1987, 1991).

Although the emphasis in Maghreb prehistory, both in research and in publication, has been on the later Pleistocene and Holocene, earlier periods have not been entirely neglected. For the most part, investigations of these, beginning as early as the 1920s (e.g., Lecointre 1926), have been concentrated in Morocco, have been carried out by trained geologists and paleontologists, and have resulted in a series of important publications on the industries and environments of the Lower Paleolithic.