The Minister of Culture’s desire to reform the regulation of preventive archeology arouses strong reluctance among archaeologists.
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Is Rachida Dati trypophobic? Is she afraid of holes? This is the question asked by the online archeology magazine, ArcheologyFriday April 12, after the declarations of the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati at theopportunity for the restoration of a Yvelines castle by a private owner. In the Parisian and on “digging holes just for fun”and that she preferred “put money into restoring heritage rather than digging a hole for a hole.”
At issue: the 2001 law on so-called preventive archeology. A law which obliges those who artificialize the soil, to build a road, a real estate project or a shopping center, to finance excavations if the State deems it necessary. However, as archaeologists express in a column published in the newspaper The world, when it is decided to dig, it is never for the pleasure of finding nothing. According to them, surveys are only required for a quarter of the 50,000 hectares of artificialized soil each year, while millions of archaeological sites remain to be discovered in France.
The example of the Château de Dampierre
Archaeologists, “amazed” they say through the words of the minister, recall that in the case of the castle of Dampierre in Yvelines, the excavations made it possible to reveal missing gardens and ponds, without having cost more than 1% of the restoration budget.
Because if digging doesn’t allow you to dig deep, it never costs very much, except for the scientists, these often precarious history researchers who go to great lengths with their shovels and picks. , within deadlines always restricted by the urgency of a construction site. Digging holes not as a hobby, but to preserve heritage, the past history which sheds light on the world today, to save what will otherwise be irreparably destroyed.