The development of motorways and high speed rail networks has been one of the main vectors of rising and expanding rescue archaeology in France. Hundreds of excavations have been conducted together with the majors projects since the end of eighties. It is hard to appraise today the contribution of these pioneering works. The differences between the regional situations partly explain it. Picardy has been highly affected by major infrastructure projects between 1989 and 2003. We have no record there, no more than in other regions, of these 15 years of activity. The story of the 270 operations conducted in the context of the major projects underlines several common characteristics : a lot of data gathered in different conditions, which remain untapped for the majority of them  and therefore, unknown by the scientific community. The national project « Actions Collectives de Recherches” allowed to go back to the data, to study them and set out the main results in a list of 187 notes, to put them into perspective, to draw the first conclusions in eight chronological sections, from Palaeolithic to Middle Ages.

Traduction : Didier BAYARD