One spontaneously associates archaeology with prehistoric or ancient vestiges. From the 1980s, at the same time as the development of medieval archaeology, a parallel archaeology of modern and contemporary times developed. Thus, already in 1983, excavations undertaken beneath the future pyramid of the Louvre, not only brought to light a Paris quarter of the 16th-18th centuries consisting of ordinary dwellings but also Bernard Palissy’s workshop and the Pavilion of the Swiss Guards.
For about twenty years, preventive archaeology has revealed unpublished data covering five centuries of French history, from the Renaissance to modern times, about which written archives give only partial or biased information†: wrecks of pirate ships, roads of the Ancient Regime, early factories, Napoleonic military camps, common graves of world conflicts or remains of the Soviet Pavilion of the International Exhibition of 1937 at the Trocadero…
Completing the chronological series of the "Archéologie de la France” series, this work is a synthesis of the discoveries of modern and contemporary archaeology, dealing with rural as well as urban sites, industries, voyages or religious centres … Dialoguing with history and anthropology, it applies to recent periods a renewed approach to archaeology.
