ABSTRACT
This chapter shows why and how the French Ministry of Culture decided to equip its regional offices with GIS, and then with an internally developed user interface named SCALA, especially designed to use the data in the National Archaeological Record. The Heritage Division of the French Ministry of Culture is responsible for the inventory, the protection, the conservation and for promoting knowledge of the cultural heritage, and therefore for the National Archaeological Record. In 1990, in view of the threatened destruction of archaeological resources due to rapid urban and rural development and of the growing cost of archaeological surveys in advance of rescue excavation, the Ministry of Culture set the enhancement of the National Archaeological Record as one of its priorities. The aim was to provide a tool to be used by numerous people (about 50), most of them archaeologists, but not necessary skilled in operating sophisticated software.
