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.

The SoCoRe! project (Open science for Conservation / Restoration of the cultural heritage) aims at structuring and opening data produced by the activities of conservation / restoration of the tangible cultural heritage. Supported by the Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine, which gathers a very large scientific community in this field, the SoCoRe! project continues the effort, led by the foundation, of designing common models, vocabularies, platforms and tools for sharing conservation / restoration data. The goal of the SoCoRe! project is to build the tools for producing data that respects the common models, for storing, sharing and querying data produced by the community, and to specify the good practices and the procedures for implementing this approach for an open science.