Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie (Mar 2012)
Archéologie préventive
Abstract
During the 1980s, the development of methodologies adapted to rescue archaeology and an increase in fieldwork produced much new data, as well as new research objectives. Yet in the 1990s, the lack of political decisions on two major subjects – the funding of excavation and the employment required to carry out this work – provoked a crisis that lasted ten years. This resulted in the 2002 reform and then the 2003 law, one of whose emblematic points is competitive tendering. Numbering fifteen today, private companies have turned out to be quite profitable, since their average net profit in 2010 was around 10%. One can reasonably ask how this kind of surplus can be generated on archaeological excavations. The observed differences in cost between private and public-sector operators for comparable work depend on both the unit price and the number of archaeologists employed to do the work. While companies cut costs to keep or win their share of the market, experts evaluating their work can only devote a few hours to reading excavation reports and very rarely carry out assessments in the field. There is an urgent need to put a stop to this infernal tendency to reclassify rescue archaeology as an activity equivalent to the construction industry. The solution is a return to State control over projects, thus reinstating scientific considerations as the main criteria in the choice of operaters. French society is no doubt ready for this. A vast majority of citizens, including developers, consider the archaeological heritage as a public possession, for which the responsability for conservation and study lies with the State.
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