Archaeology Notebooks

The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (the Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development), supported by the expertise of the Advisory Commission on Archaeological Research Abroad, subsidises close to 160 archaeological expeditions (from palaeontology to the medieval period) working in 75 countries. Archaeologists’ home institutions (the National Centre for Scientific Research, universities) and our local partners contribute financially to fieldwork.

Some expeditions are conducted at world-famous sites, such as Karnak, Angkor, Ugarit, Petra and Michoacán. Expeditions everywhere aim to comply with the wishes of our foreign partners to whom this cooperation is crucial in helping to protect and enhance their national heritage.

Research programmes employ both traditional methods (applied arts) and increasingly advanced techniques. These include conducting geophysical surveys at sites, generating computer-based reconstructions of early settlements and landscapes, mapping historical natural resources (plant, animal and mineral resources), establishing genetic (DNA analysis) and cultural characterisations of past populations and their ways of life, protecting remains and, in some cases, helping to restore monumental remains.

Most excavations are conducted in partnership with local teams and have a significant training component: over 100 foreign archaeologists were trained over a 10-year period. Findings from this type of research are regularly publicised by means of journals, publications, and international conferences and exhibitions. Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, one of the editorial structures of CulturesFrance, was responsible for the publication of a number of the most significant books up to 2007.

CulturesFrance
1 bis, avenue de Villars
75007 Paris
Tel: +33 (0)1 53 69 83 00
Website: www.culturesfrance.com

^{Updated on 01.13.09}