The archaeological study of plaster as a material was initiated on the basis of observations made in excavations carried out in the Seine-Saint-Denis and Val d’Oise départements ; it is renewed today by recent research. The problem of the evolution of its production is tackled here regressively, taking account of literary evidence from the encyclopaedias of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and of the archaeological evidence updated by recent discoveries and by the experimental approach. It emerges that the plaster kilns of the early mediaeval and mediaeval periods are a formal adaptation of lime kilns; on the other hand, the probability of the emergence of buttressed kilns in the Middle Ages remains dubious. Experimentally produced lime has been used notably to make cast plaster sarcophagi, which sheds new light on the studies undertaken on this subject in 1980.