The time has passed. We remember this first report on a site of preventive archaeological excavations, in Puy-de-Dôme, not far from the site of Gergovie. From a field of mud which was going to be transformed into a road bypassing the Clermont urban area, strange collective tombs from the Gallic period had arisen, occupied only by horses. It was at the end of 2002, a few months after the creation, the 1is February, from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), which was leading this excavation.
Twenty years, then, have passed. The time has come to take stock of Inrap, but also to remember that this young research organization was born not without pain. Professor emeritus at the University of Paris-I, Jean-Paul Demoule was the first president of Inrap, from 2002 to 2008, and he recalls that at the end of the last century, land-use planning projects that stripped the ground and revealed the buried heritage were an opportunity “Recurrent standoffs between the regional archeology services and the developers, who were not obliged to pay for the excavations. Everything was often destroyed and unfortunate volunteers went to scrape the earth behind the tracks of the bulldozers”.
In 1992, France signed the Malta Convention for the protection of the archaeological heritage, which came into force in 1996. Paris undertook to carry out preventive excavations during land development works… without however having a real organization to carry them out, these being at the time entrusted to an association under the 1901 law placed under the supervision of the State, the Association for National Archaeological Excavations (AFAN). But, at the end of the 1990s, occurs “an alignment of planets”summarizes Jean-Paul Demoule: “A left-wing government more sensitive to this issue, strong social pressure because AFAN had more and more employees on fixed-term contracts, major demonstrations by archaeologists and a new report on the subject requested by the Ministry of Culture , which I wrote with the State Councilor Bernard Pêcheur and the mayor of Quimper, Bernard Poignant. »
The polluter pays principle
Submitted in 1998, this report recommends the creation of a public institution to replace AFAN and leads to the 2001 law on preventive archeology as well as the birth of Inrap the following year. The discipline is financed according to the polluter-pays principle: the developers, whose work will destroy buried archaeological sites, must pay a contribution for the excavations. Researchers recover material heritage while studying the sites, which in a way ensures their virtual rescue.
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