Ce qui reste, ce qui s’inscrit. Traces, vestiges, empreintes

Archaeology is focused not on the Past, but on the material vestiges which remain from the Past. Archaeologists study not only monuments, or pieces of art, but rather “things”, which are the residues of what we produce, consume or transform. As such, the archaeological discipline studies what remains, materially, from the Past within the Present. Rather than with History, taken in its traditional meaning — to reconstitute the past such as it was originally — Archaeology is more confronted with Memory: not exactly the memory of the people, but more exactly the inheritances of forms which pass on things and which constitute the memory of places and objects