1651-1740

French archaeologist and Louis XIV's librarian and genealogist, who conducted the first known excavation of a medieval site. Captivated by classical antiquities and prehistoric Celtic culture, Europeans of the Enlightenment largely ignored the Middle Ages, which they viewed as a barbaric period. Attitudes gradually changed in the early eighteenth century, and articles on medieval antiquities began appearing. In this atmosphere of increasing medieval interest, Clérambault in 1727 excavated the thirteenth-century graveyard at Châtenay-Malabry in France.