Regional Archaeology Service

• Preventive archaeology

The law for preventive archaeology promulgated in 2001 has been amended several times since. This law is an important step in the policy in favor of archaeology. The increase in public or private works, experienced in the last twenty years, has, in fact, deeply concerned soils and basements and gave rise to numerous operations of preventive excavations. It was then necessary to reconcile the constraints of scientific research work with the imperatives of the development of planning and construction.

 The current legislation proposes the following: 
- definition of preventive archaeology and the role of the State. The State services shall draw up and update the national archaeological map and prescribe measures for the detection, conservation or safeguarding by scientific study of the archaeological heritage;
- a public monopoly (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research and approved local authorities) for carrying out diagnostics and opening up to competition for excavations, subject to approval by the State;
- introduction of a general flat-rate fee for the financing of preliminary diagnosis and excavation operations paid by the developers;
- right to custody of movable remains for a maximum period of 2 years for the excavation operator. Ownership of the owner of the land on half of the inventory;

A decree provided by the law completes and specifies the devices: decree 2004-490 issued for the application of the law and relating to administrative and financial procedures in the matter of preventive archaeology.

• Orientations

There are six Territorial Archaeological Research Commissions. They are established by the Decree 2017-156 of 8 February 2017 on the National Council for Archaeological Research and the Territorial Commissions for Archaeological Research (Official Journal of 10 February 2017) pursuant to Law no. 2016-925 of 7 July 2016 on freedom of creation, architecture and heritage.

The South-East Territorial Commission for Archaeological Research consists of the regions of Corsica, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Its headquarters are in Aix-en-Provence.

It is chaired by the Prefect of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.

It comprises 10 members representing the CNRS, Higher Education, the Ministry of Culture, INRAP, Local Authorities, an authorized operator for preventive archaeology and four specialists (Prehistory, Protohistory, Middle Ages, Antiquity).

An inspector of heritage of the Directorate-General for Heritage and the regional curators of archaeology attend the sessions of the Committee at the end of which minutes are drawn up.

The experts of the commission carry out the scientific evaluation of the archaeological operations and their results. It shall be consulted on all questions submitted to it by the representative of the State in the regions. It formulates all proposals and opinions on all archaeological activity, including studies and publications.

After their four-year mandate, the experts prepare a report on the activity of archaeological research.

• The types of action taken by the service

- the compilation of the regional archaeological map in a database. For each site, the database provides topographical information (commune, place-dit, coordinates...), archaeological (vestiges, dating...), administrative (classification, excavations...), and references of sources (bibliography, prospections...) (reserved consultation ) ;

- coordination of research: planned excavations and rescues, research programmes;

- scientific publication: Documents d'Archéologie, Bilan scientifique annuel;

- protection and exploitation of sites;

- the mounting of folder exposures;

- the coordination of cultural actions with the National Education, university interventions;

- documentation: the documentary collection on heritage and archaeology;

- the census of excavation sites open to volunteers in Paca;

- border and international cooperation.