ABSTRACT
France represented one of the main theatres of operations during the conflicts in both World War 1 and World War 2. Even so, relevant archaeology in this country is still in an embryonic stage. The excavations carried out in Saint-Rémy-la-Calonne (Meuse), concerning a 1914 burial site that notably led to the exhumation of the body of the famous writer Alain-Foumier, is a particularly interesting example of the potential of this type of study (Adam, Boura, Duday 1992). Yet it remains an isolated case, just when the round-table discussion of Péronne in 1997 proved all the interest that historians of the period could find through the archaeological approach of vestiges of war (Schnapp 1999). In such a context, the recent investigations in Lorraine concerning the wreck of a World War 2 bomber is an interesting contribution to a field that is still, unfortunately, too often considered by French archaeologists as purely anecdotal.
