Henri Galinié
Henri Galinié is a French archaeologist specializing in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the transition between these two periods. He is also one of the promoters of the special status of urban archaeology.
Since his retirement, he has devoted himself to the historical study of grape varieties in France, particularly in the Loire Valley.
Biography and work
Born on 2 March 1946 in Nouméa, Henri Galinié moved to metropolitan France in 1959. After studies at Paris and Caen, he earned a PhD in History from the University of Caen in 1981, based on a thesis on the topography of Tours from the 4th to the 11th century. In parallel, he trained in archaeology at Winchester, where he participated in the excavation of Wolvesey Castle under the direction of Martin Biddle.Galinié settled in Tours in 1970. After eight years teaching at the University Institute of Technology in Tours, he joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Since 1992, he has taught archaeology at the University of Tours, and he has supervised numerous PhD theses in History.
Focused on establishing the specific status of urban archaeology,, Galinié founded the Urban Archaeology Laboratory of Tours in 1973; in 1984, the LAUT became the National Center for Urban Archaeology, under the Ministry of Culture, and Galinié directed it from 1984 to 1992. This structure was then replaced by the Archaeology and Territories Laboratory, a CNRS unit that later became joint with the University of Tours, following a collaboration between the CNRS and the university; Galinié led it until 2003. With the same objective, he organized the first International Colloquium on Urban Archaeology in Tours from 17 to 20 November 1980, at the request of the Ministry of Culture.
A field archaeologist, he led numerous excavations in Tours and Touraine, including:
- 1969–1974: Saint-Pierre-le-Puellier
- 1974–78: Château de Tours
- 1978–82: Departmental archives
- 1979–82: Cloître Saint-Martin
- 1995–2001: Rigny-Ussé
- 2000–2003: Square Prosper-Mérimée
A more complete list of publications is available in the Base Malraux.
He created the archaeology journals Recherches sur Tours, À propos d'archéologie urbaine, and relaunched the Revue archéologique du Centre de la France.
At the end of the 2008 academic year, due to retirement, Galinié left teaching and the CNRS with the title of honorary research director. He continues to publish articles and excavation reports, and devotes himself to retrospective ampelography, particularly in Touraine via a blog, and more broadly for France through several publications, including the transcription of L'enquête de Nicolas Dupré de Saint-Maur pour fixer la nomenclature de la vigne and coordination of the CepAtlas project.