Réussites et déboires d'une œuvre archéologique unique : le colonel Carbuccia au nord de l'Aurès (1848-1850)

Abstract

Colonel Jean-Luc Carbuccia is well known thanks to the excavations he carried out in Aesculapius' sanctuary in Lambaesis in the middL· of the XlXth century while he was commandant in chief of the 2nd regiment of the Foreign Legion. Although this scientific work is in line with the long and established attitude of many military who took an active interest in the traces lefi by the Romans whom they considered as their forerunners, it is at the same time unparalleled as it stands out as an accomplished performance of considerable scope. This work mainly consists of the drawing up of a map showing all the remains of Batna's Subdivision and of a report detailing these remains with plates enclosed. This hithertho unpublished work provides in many cases the only record on ruins which disappeared early and shows that the high Roman popuUtion density in the Aures, long denied before being reasserted today, had been observed in the first decades of the conquest.