Yet, despite the signiWcant increase in professionalization, the role of
amateurs remained important. The army continued to play a relevant role.
This can be seen, for example, by the publication of the Archaeological Atlas
of Algeria, which was based on the data gathered by the Topographical
Brigades, who undertook systematic area-by-area surveys in Tunisia and
Algeria (Pringle 1981: 4). The reasons for non-professionals getting involved
in archaeology varied. For some of them it was a question of patriotism,
something, as will be stressed below, that they shared with the professional
archaeologists themselves. Others saw archaeology as a means to Christianize.
This is because archaeology became enmeshed in other areas bolstered by
imperialism, mainly the use of religion in cultural assimilation, a practice
already seen in India (Chapter 8) and in Russia. For example, the interest in
archaeology of the Archbishop of Algiers, Father Charles-Martial-Allemand
Lavigerie (1825–92), was aroused by his endeavour to demonstrate ‘the
primacy of the Christian over the Muslim religion’ and ‘to prove through
the facts of the civilised of... Europe that the Church has not stopped being
the friend of science’ (in Gran-Aymerich 1998: 244). The archbishop’s wishes
inspired the involvement in archaeology of one of the missionary orders, that
of the White Fathers. Among the members of the order the work of Father
Alfred Louis Delattre (1850–1932) should be highlighted. He excavated in
many Punic sites as well as, connected with his religious mission, four early
Christian basilicas (ibid. 68, 156; 2001: 211).
Megaliths, skulls, Berbers, and Aryans: making sense of the prehistory
of North Africa and the Canary Islands
Although most research centred on the classical period, attention was also
paid to both the prehistoric and the post-Roman past. Although prehistoric
remains were largely ignored, an exception was made with types of monu-
ments familiar to the European eye, such as the megalithic structures found in
east Algeria and central Tunisia. These wereWrst identiWed as Druidic, Celtic,
and Gaulish, categories approximately cognate between the 1800s and the
1860s with that of the Berbers. Despite this, the European origin of the
archaeological remains was never doubted. The impact of the development
of physical anthropology in France (Blanckaert 2001) (Chapter 12) became
clear in the early analysis of skeletal evidence: in 1868 the archaeologist Jules-
Rene ́Bourguignat (1829–92) classiWed the human bone remains from the
megalithic complex of Roknia into several racial groups: Blacks, mixture of
Blacks and Berbers, Egyptians and Aryans. On the basis of the number of
individuals of each race in each grave he maintained a social structure had
Russian Empire and French North Africa 271