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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
Although French archaeologists such as Pbre Poidebard in Syria, and Colonel Baradez in North Africa, have been using air photography very successfully for a long time in sub-desert regions overseas, this has not been so in Metropolitan France. In fact it was a mere ten years ago-a considerable time after systematic air photography had been going on in England-that French research workers began to use air photography, and even then as individual efforts each in his own region. In almost all cases they used, like the author, the aircraft of local aero-clubs, and small non-professional cameras, usually the simple 24 x 36mm. models. That these individual efforts have been far from negligible became more widely apparent in Paris, in August 1963, at the conference on, and exhibition of, air photography organized by M. Raymond Chevallier (ANTIQUITY, 1963, 296), under the auspices of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes of the Sorbonne where he has recently inaugurated the first university course in photo-interpretation in France.
Two years ago we published (ANTIQUITY, 1962, 279) an article by Dr J. K. S. St Joseph summarizing the results of a season of aerial reconnaissance in northern France. We now publish a complementary article by M. Roger Agache, who has been engaged in air photography in the north of France for several years. M. Agache is Regional Director of Prehistoric Antiquities for the Circonscription de l'Académie de Lille.
[1] Cf. Archéologie aérienne et Techniques complémentaires. (Illustrated catalogue of the exhibition 4 July-Q November 1963. Paris: Institut Pédagogique National. The papers given at this conference are in the press.)
[2] J. Bradford, Ancient Landscapes: studies in field archaeology (London, 1957).
[3] Bull. Soc. Préhist. du Nord, 3, October 1960.
[4] Louvet, Histoire du Païs de Beauvaisis, 1631, p. 24, reads: ‘quand cette grande campagne est ensemencée en bled, on y reconnoit encore le compassement et les endrois des rües ou le bled est plus petit qu’es lieux ou les maisons étaient bâties. . .’
[5] These researches are the subject of a special number of Bull. Soc. Préhist. du Nord, 5, October 1962.
[6] J. K. S. St Joseph, ‘Aerial Reconnaissance in Northern France’, ANTIQUITY, 1962, 279-86.
[7] Revue du Nord, 176, 1962, 319-38; R. E. M. Wheeler and K. M. Richardson, The Hill Forts of Northern France (Society of Antiquaries Research Report, XIX, 1957).
[8] Bull. Soc. Préhist. du Nord, 3, 1960, 31.
[9] J. K. S. St Joseph, loc. cit. pl. XL (a) is a good photograph of the southern zone.
[10] Revue du Nord, loc. cit., 326. More information obtained in winter flying since then has to be added to this plan.
[11] Bull. Soc. Préhist. Française, LIX, 1962, 257-66.
[12] Cf. I. G. N. photos in Bull. Soc. Française de Photogramntétrie, 5, 1962, 21-2.
[13] M. W. Beresford and J. K. S. St Joseph, Medieval England on Aerial Survey (Cambridge, 1958).
[14] J. K. S. St Joseph, loc. cit., 283.
[15] Bull. Soc. Fr. de Photogrammétrie, 5,1962, 16.
