Archaeology’s Legacy: vestiges, traces, memories of a scientific activity (Morocco, Mauritania 19th-21st centuries) – ArchArch

Archaeology produces, as a corollary to its investigation of the remains of past societies, significant
material and immaterial traces in the environment where it is practiced. The archaeologist reshapes
our representations of historical otherness and literally disrupts the landscape and the spatiality of
the territories in which he or she intervenes, as well as the lives of those who inhabit them. He is
therefore the producer of a scientific economy acting on the world of her time and ours. Her activity
"produces" meanings, but also new monuments, collections of objects, archives, in other words:

vestiges. Born of archaeological activity, these remains can be considered as an object of study in
their own right. By combining the skills of specialists in the history and anthropology of knowledge,
law and heritage, without depriving itself of the contributions of a reflexive archaeology, ArchArch
questions what is archaeology after archaeology. It aims to develop and test a hermeneutic of the
remains of archaeology, which aims to think about the different types of remains concerned:
archaeological sites, artefacts, archives, infrastructures, and the learned and unlearned memory of
archaeology. This meta-archaeology is based on two case studies located in Muslim countries
formerly colonized by France, Morocco and Mauritania, which were explored in alternating colonial,
national and international cooperation contexts: Volubilis, a major site in Roman Africa, and Koumbi
Saleh, a capital city in medieval Africa. The comparative analysis of the remains of their archaeologies
weaves a historicized and documented reflection on the learned and unschooled ways of managing
and digesting an archaeological heritage, a complex aggregation of the legacy of the Ancients
(inscribed in an identity genealogy) and of archaeologists (situated in a scientific filiation).
Involving researchers from various backgrounds – history, archaeology, law, anthropology – the
reflection carried out within the framework of ArchArch is conducted at three distinct and
interdependent levels. Firstly, ArchArch uses the notion of 'archaeological remains' as a basis for a
hermeneutic of what archaeological activity does to its environment, to society and to people, as
well as to archaeology and archaeologists themselves. Secondly, ArchArch puts the question of
archaeological remains to the test at two sites, Volubilis and Koumbi Saleh, which, in all their
contrasts, between being classified on the Unesco World Heritage List and being virtually abandoned,
constitute formidable documentary 'deposits': archival sources, archaeological material, legal texts,
ethnographic data and oral sources. Aiming at a holistic treatment of the two cases of study, it is
through the prism of history, anthropology and legal sciences that the material and immaterial traces
left by the archaeological activity on these two sites are tracked, collected, inventoried, archived and
analyzed. Thirdly, ArchArch implements an original experiment of deployment and sequencing of the
archaeological archives of Volubilis and Koumbi Saleh, from the archival management of the funds to
their dissemination via digital humanities, through the analysis not only of their content but also of
their constitution as a full-fledged object, thus documenting the absence that is consubstantial with
archaeological research, which destroys its deposit at the same time as it exhumes and produces its
own object. In this way, ArchArch contributes to building the archives that are crucial for the future
of archaeology as a science, for the institutions and states that fund research and, more broadly, for
the societies that are necessarily stakeholders in the construction of their past.