Dr. Patrick Périn

Patrick Périn (1942–2026) completed his entire university education in history, art history and archaeology at the Sorbonne, where he defended his doctoral thesis in 1970 on The Dating of Merovingian Graves: History, Methods and Applications (published by Droz in Geneva in 1980).

From 1971 to 1984, he was curator of the archaeological department of the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, before becoming director of the departmental museums of Seine-Maritime in Rouen, including the Musée départemental des Antiquités, from 1984 to 1996. He then served as director of the Musée d’Archéologie nationale from 1996 to 2012, after which he was granted emeritus status.

He directed several excavations in the Ardennes, including Merovingian cemeteries, and later in Paris, notably at the Forum of Lutetia and the church of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre. He was also associate professor at Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he taught the archaeology and art history of the Western Early Middle Ages. His research focused primarily on the contribution of archaeology to the history of the Merovingian period.