This is both a historical detective work -- piecing together an innovative research project of the 1620s -- and a provocative argument, based on the reconstruction of Peiresc's project. Our understanding of the history of historical scholarship needs to be turned upside down. In the "how" and "why" of Peiresc's scholarly practice and, in the chain of those who understood and remembered him, we learn that far from disappearing, antiquarianism (AN) persisted as a major source of historical innovation and renovation, and that this continues up through the present time. Contents: Peiresc and AN; AN and an Archival "Science"; Researching the History of Provence; Peiresc's Medieval Mediterranean in the History of Historiography. Illus.