Valentin Durand

Noted French archeologist. He held a professorship in Tours in 1890, when he became the father of Amarante Durand and his wife died at childbirth.

He was responsible for excavation sites in the Dordogne region and educated his daughter in the field. Around 1906 he worked at a site near Saint-Cyprian. While he was away on a lecture tour in America, young Amarante was supervising work at that site.

During his absence Amarante and a group of local amateurs discovered a prehistoric cave with elaborately painted walls in the nearby Valojoulx area. Valentin learned it from a newspaper and demanded that she wait until he returned and could oversee the project; she refused and continued to explore the caves further, making it clear that the discovery, and future discoveries there, were hers. Their relationship became strained and they never reconciled.

Valentin investigated excavation sites in Egypt when he died of a spider bite in 1907.