by Ben Jackson
Rescue archeology is the name of the game when it comes to discovering the history of Paris.
Conservators and archaeologists are often racing against time to find and preserve the city’s past as new development carries Paris into the future.
I got to learn about this and see some of the objects recovered by a dedicated team of archaeologists at Reserves of the Paris Archaeological Pole, which is a division of the city government charged with discovering and preserving the city’s past.
Our tour was primarily led by Lucie Altenburg, conservatrice-restauratrice de collections archeologiques. To put it in plain English, she is a conservator who preserves artifacts for future generations.
Many objects are discovered when companies start construction on new buildings. By law, construction companies must have a survey done of their sites. The archaeologists check to see whether the sites might contain anything of historical significance.
“In the fifth arrondissement, it is almost certain that it will be positive” Altenburg said.
Sites are evaluated for the objects that might be there and whether or layers of ground that mark different periods have been disturbed. If a site previously had construction on it and the historical layers are jumbled, then it has less historical value because determining the age and context of artifacts is more difficult. Studying the layers of history in the ground is called stratigraphy.
Altenburg said once the survey is complete, negotiations begin with builders over how much time the team has to excavate the site. Most digs last between one and six months, but they can go longer depending on the significance of the site and the building schedule.
“We do have time constraints,” Altenburg said. “We say, ‘this is how much time we need’ and negotiate for the time needed.”
While builders are generally receptive to the need for a dig, she emphasized that the work often becomes rescuing artifacts, so they need to work both quickly and carefully to preserve the past.
Currently, there are about 2,000 sites around the city that are being excavated. Because the Olympics has made use of many pre-existing venues, there have not been many items uncovered during preparation for the games. But during the construction of the Addidas Arena in 2019, several bayonets and sabers from 1870 were found.
While we weren’t able to see these because they were in a climate-controlled room, we still saw a large amount of pottery, mosaics, a sarcophagus with bones in it, and several large pieces of an aqueduct.
The largest part of the aqueduct was wrapped in cellophane to keep it stable. Altenburg said the approach to preserving artifacts is to stabilize them and make them coherent – reassembling a damaged mosaic or piece of pottery, for example – but not to restore them. The goal is to educate the public and discover Paris’s past. While the public does not have access to the archives, students can study the collection for research, and the archive tries to get media coverage for artifacts and loans them to museums for exhibits.
But preserving the city’s past has not always been professional. Paris archaeology began to be organized in the 19th century by Theodore Vaquer, an architect who noticed historical objects in some of his work. He kept extensive notes and journals about the history of Paris, and his work is still referenced by the staff today. Before Vacquer, Altenburg said most of the people preserving artifacts were history buffs who were not always systematic about the work.
Now, with professional archaeologists, the work is more deliberate and involves modern tools like x-ray machines that allow the team to look inside an object and learn more. Altenburg said one common use was x-ray corroded metal objects to see their original shape under the corrosion, and to determine if they are stable enough to be cleaned.
At the end of the tour, the staff spent some time talking with the people from the tour about where they were from and briefly mentioning the archeology in each country.
There were attendees from China and Italy, both with thousands of years of history. I didn’t expect to hear much about archeology in the United States, but Altenburg mentioned that she had done some work at Colonial Williamsburg.
“You guys have a lot of great pirate wrecks,” Altenburg said.
Keep the Flame Alive would like to thank the Paris Media Center for organizing this tour.