La Commission de Topographie des Gaules (1858–1879): structurer, encourager et contrôler le développement de l’archéologie nationale

The Commission de Topographie des Gaules (CTG) is a group of scholars set up by Napoléon III in 1858. Originally, the CTG was created to help the emperor in the writing of his Histoire de Jules César. Quickly, the imperial commission oversteps this first objective and will constitute the core of archaeological research in France. Using the existing networks of scholars and creating its own, the CTG wanted to draw the very first archaeological map of France, the Dictionnaire archéologique de la Gaule. The commission survived to the collapse of the Second French Empire in 1870 and was officially transformed into the Commission de Géographie historique de l’ancienne France in 1880.