L'évaluation du potentiel archéologique des villes

Abstract

Define archaeology for urban city brings several questions. One of them is « how to reconcile preventive archaeology and urbans development projects ? ». Soil and built archives are defined as being non-renewable resources to protect and – according to points of view – constitute a potentiel or a risk to take into account during a development project. In every case, it is necessary to be able to consider and characterize as exactly as possible the archaeological potential impacted during a development. In order to plan at best the investment in time and money for the archaeological interventions and the return on investment. Then, how to transform the "archaeological risk" into added value for a city? Since the 1980s, reflections were led on the practices of the urban archaeology. Solutions and strategies of research were proposed to reconcile archaeological research and urban planning. The assessment of these practices is mitigated even today. Despite of the mass of archaeological information acquired during the operations, the archaeological teams often have few means to exploit them on the scale of the city and to propose and/or update maps of the archaeological potential. These decision-making tools are nevertheless precious and usable as much by the planners, the elected representatives, the prescribers and the researchers. Some cases of positive experiences led in Centre region or also in Lyon and in Bordeaux will be discussed here.