ABSTRACT
LAURENT OLIVIER and ANICK COUDARTDoes French theoretical archaeology exist? This question was raised recently by one of us (Coudart, in Cleuziou, Coudart, Demoule & Schnapp 1991) in an article which attempted to define the position occupied by French research in relation to the main currents of thought or major debates rife in the discipline over the last thirty years. The position of French archaeology vis-à-vis the processual and post-processual schools of Anglo-Saxon archaeology was obviously one of the major preoccupations. In particular Coudart sought to bring out the features in the structure and history of the discipline in France which might explain why the Anglo-American archaeological ‘theories’ had never really found their place in the French archaeological debate.
