Places of worship in Antiquity were conceived by communities as settings for their religious practices and for ritual interaction with the gods. Thus, sanctuaries are first and foremost places devoted to ceremony and communication with the gods, and they have left behind innumerable traces which today’s archaeological methods are now capable of revealing. We must admit in fact that the limitations of the archaeological methods applied to historical periods had until recently largely restricted our recognition of the places of worship and of the practices that structured them. As our approach concentrated on architecture and ex-voto, we inevitably missed the most important aspects, i.e. the structural evolution of the place of worship from the moment of its creation - a most important event - as also of the ceremonies held in its precincts or outside – knowing that religious practices were clearly not confined within the boundaries of the sanctuaries. This paper aims to give an account of what is at stake in the study of a sanctuary, especially given the present day context of the development of archaeology as a science. Traduction : Margaret & Jean-louis CADOUX