• The Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region has around 36,000 referenced archaeological sites.

  • The gendarmerie estimates that there are about 1,000 prospectors who act in 85% of cases on known sites.

  • The destruction or degradation of an archaeological site is punishable by 7 years imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 euros.

Call him doctor. Alexandre Dumont-Castells has all the attributes of a gendarme, from uniform to service weapon, but does not treat people. His thing is the archaeological heritage, which he tries to protect by fighting against its plunder, a subject from which he has just completed a thesis defended at the University of Aix-Marseille. So here he is, a doctor of archeology.

A field of study in which the gendarmerie really needed to be reinforced, as evidenced by the recorded increase in “archaeological looting and attempts”, particularly in its sector of Lançon-de-Provence (+ 45%) and Pélissanne (+35 %). “On average, there is a significant monetary discovery every month in the Paca region”, abounds Alexandre Dumont-Castells. Property that legally belongs to the State, in full if the land of its discovery has changed ownership since 2016, when the legislation evolved, and leaving a small percentage to the holder of the land title, if it is earlier to this law.

Between 2015 and 2017, over the past year, the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (Drac) which monitors archaeological heritage quantified the damage at one million euros in Paca.

“The region has around 36,000 referenced archaeological sites”, explains the young doctor and “it is estimated that there are around 1,000 prospectors who act in 85% of cases on known sites”.

The objects gleaned, "essentially metallic and often from the Gallo-Roman or medieval period, are then sold in flea markets, garage sales or on the Internet".

The third largest traffic in the world after drugs and weapons

However, the issue is not so much to repress "as to provide education" to a public which often does not know the legislation.

However, the destruction or degradation of an archaeological site is punishable by 7 years imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 euros.

The average age of prospectors is 44 and a quarter of them are unemployed.

Only 20% of illegal prospectors have been the subject of criminal proceedings, most facing a call to the law, according to a study running over four years, between 2016 and 2020, a period during which 120 complaints were registered.

Our archeology file

Although often of lesser monetary value, archaeological finds are heritage and can have significant historical and cultural value.

More than one prospector gives in to the call of the pickax and dreams of the find of his life, the one that will fuel the traffic of archaeological objects.

The illicit trade in antiques is in fact the third largest traffic in the world after that of narcotics and weapons.

In Paca, 18 gendarmes were recently trained to fight against this increasing activity.

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Culture

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