1In the 1960s, a new field of acquisition and interpretation of historical data appeared in France, with the advent of rescue archaeology. This was developed in piece-meal fashion, as a reaction to the destructions of many sites caused by urban infrastructural work, by implementing the prerogatives of the law of 1941 and negotiating with developers. Thanks to the commitment of archaeologists, it allowed the safeguarding of sites and information, but it was not based on an appropriate and adequate juridical system. Preventive archaeology, which is based on the law of 17 January 2001, is a form of intervention that, like planned excavation, responds to scientific goals, but is triggered by the threat of destruction of remains due to large-scale works.

2It was paradoxically the development of territorial planning – the tracing of motorways, railways, gas pipelines or other works – that led archaeologists to search for new insights on the spatial limits of sites, and even develop inter-site archaeology. These linear explorations became transects in the strict sense of the word: a band where successive human occupations could be analysed and put into perspective. Eventually, they became reference frames authorizing the re-examination of data collected in limited spaces (planned excavation, for instance) and the redefinition of ancient territorial networks. In France, almost the entire territory potentially became an archaeological site, which cleared the way for new fields of study and enabled a new overview and reappraisal of history at the national scale. Despite certain ideological hindrances and economic constraints, the French model of archaeology is a matter of praise, and the approach consisting in reconciling economic development and heritage studies also developed in all continents.

3In the field, it seems at a first glance that excavation methods have evolved little these last decades. At least three factors since the mid-twentieth century, however, have perceptibly modified the operational field. The first is the anthropological approach, which nowadays dictates all work carried out in the field. Far from being the mere collection of objects, a reading of architectural ground plans or even the stratigraphic analysis of a site, what the archaeologist nowadays pinpoints, records and describes is the set of human “gestures” that have participated in site formation, occupation and then abandonment. Each stratigraphic unit or context, whether of human origin or natural (palaeosols, evidence of flooding…), “positive” (deliberate infill of sediment or materials, construction stage…) or “negative” (digging of a pit, razing of a wall…) is studied and put in relation with other units so as to place in a sequence the various events of a site’s history and environment.

4The second factor that, in an excavation, has modified operational practices and opened new fields of research is the intra-site analysis of palaeo-environmental data. Indeed, the site’s environmental dimension was traditionally grasped separately and after fieldwork; the environmental setting – perceived above all as natural – was a matter for peripheral studies. In the last thirty years or so, the exposure of domestic settlements or necropolises has allowed archaeologists to collect ecofacts (seeds, charcoal, pollens, bones, sediments…), which contribute information on the environment, its changes through time, and the impact of human activity on farmlands and spaces described as “natural”. These data, jointly investigated by climatologists, glaciologists, historians and archaeologists, allow for an appreciation of climatic characteristics.

5The third innovating factor is linked to the increasingly frequent use of photogrammetry, 3-D scanning and digital photography in order to record, analyse and even virtually reconstruct the site. The use of these tools, products of unceasingly renewed technological prowess, becomes indispensable due to the fact that in preventive archaeology in particular, the site is destroyed during exploration and reconstructed (scientifically and/or virtually) by further studies. Effectively, archaeology is not untouched by a phenomenon affecting almost the entire range of scientific disciplines: the multiplication of data, of their recording, their methods of management and analysis, their exploitation and ways of making them available to the scholarly community. As illustrated in concrete terms by this special issue of Archéopages, in a few decades the development of our discipline and the expertise acquired by its public players (from the evolution of dictates of the law to participation in the movement of open science) have contributed an exemplary wealth in heritage and science to national archaeology.