archaeology. For the period under study (with a few exceptions such as
those commented on for India, Indonesia, and the later development of
archaeology in Japan just before the First World War) the study of antiquties
in Asia would remain the almost exclusive province of Western scholarship.
Within the school, archaeology was entrusted to the architect Henri Par-
mentier (1871–1949), the sculptor Charles Carpeaux (1870–1904) and the
architect Henri Dufour. TheWrst would be the head of the Archaeological
Service of the EFEO from 1904, whereas from 1903 Carpeaux would be the
head of Practical Works. The director, Louis Finot, had already published an
inventory of Cham monuments in 1901, using them as the basis to discuss
ancient religions. His study would be followed by many others (Lafont n.d.).
Excavations were undertaken in this period at the Cham sites of Mi Son,
Dong Duong, and Chanh-lo. In 1903–4 Parmentier and Carpeaux jointly
excavated Mi Son, which they considered to be the centre of a Champa
kingdom from the lateWfth to the mid thirteenth centuries, and the Dong
Duong monastery, a ninth-century religious centre. Later, the restorations of
the temples of Po Nagar and of Po Klaung Garai were undertaken in 1905 and
1908 respectively. The links with India already highlighted for the Khmer were
also seen in Cham sites. These were revealed by the borrowing of Hinduism
and the Sanskrit alphabet, as well as by the inXuence of Indian architecture
and artistic styles. TheWrst results of the studies of Cham architecture would
be published in 1909 by Parmentier in hisInventaire descriptif des monuments
cams de l’Annam(a second volume would appear in 1918 and would be the
basis for a Colonial Archaeology prize).
In Cambodia, the school organized further expeditions to Angkor in 1901–2
and in 1904 with the French Acade ́mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
Restoration was undertaken in 1908. Aymonier’s study was continued by the
seconded army oYcer and engineer Edouard Lunet de La Jonquiere, who published aWrst inventory of about 910 ancient monuments in Cambodia and part of Thailand in 1907 (Malleret 1969: 45–6). George Coedes (1886–
1969), one of the great scholars in theWeld, also began a few of the earlier
studies undertaken on Sanskrit and Khmer inscriptions and texts in the decade
before the First World War.
It has been pointed out that no local archaeologists—Vietnamese, Khmer
or Laotians—existed in French Indochina and no training was organized
(Higham 1989: 26). However, this viewpoint has been opposed by Haydon
Cherry. He acknowledges that education had not been one of the priorities of
the French authorities. In Vietnam, for example, from a pre-colonial situation
in which at least 25 per cent of the population had been literate to some degree,
after the First World War thisWgure had dropped to less than 10 per cent
236 Colonial Archaeology