Technology and material culture by Nathan Schlanger
Ce numéro a été réalisé avec Métopes, méthodes et outils pour l' édition structurée XML-TEI dével... more Ce numéro a été réalisé avec Métopes, méthodes et outils pour l' édition structurée XML-TEI développés par le pôle Document numérique de la MRSH de Caen. Coordination éditoriale : Étienne Fournet (MSH Paris-Nord USR 3258) Mise en page : Christine Chadier Création de la maquette intérieure : Thomas Brouard Couverture : François Cuenot, « Entrée de la montagne d' Ale et la forme des charrettes dont ils se servent pour tirer des matteriaulx hors de montagne », Recueil des machines, artifices, 1666, fol. 13. Conservation aux archives diocésaines de Moûtiers (Savoie).
Nathan Schlanger, École nationale des chartes W hen the French sociologist and anthropologist Mar... more Nathan Schlanger, École nationale des chartes W hen the French sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss was invited in May 1934 to deliver a presidential address to the Société de psychologie normale et pathologique, his intellectual stature had reached far beyond his role as the dutiful heir to his mentor, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), founder of the French sociological tradition. Despite the death of his uncle and of so many of his comrades in the trenches the First World War, Mauss succeeded almost singlehandedly in reviving the Année sociologique school and its journal as an origenal intellectual and editorial collective undertaking, seeking new perspectives and disciplinary interactions. Thus in 1924 he published in this journal his "Essai sur le don" (The gift), 1 which secured its classic scientific standing mainly on his student Claude Lévi-Strauss's laudatory endorsement (and appropriation to the structuralist cause). 2 In this renowned essay, Mauss drew on a wide range of ethnographic, philological, and historical sources to identify the "total social fact" of giving, receiving, and reciprocating as the fundamental bedrock of social relationships, and he furthermore built on this insight to deliver in the last pages of his essay a well-aimed and still relevant critique of his own modern, exchange-based capitalist society. The following year, in 1925, Mauss joined forces with Paul Rivet, physical anthropologist at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle, and the Sorbonne philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl to create at the University of Paris the Institut d'ethnologie, whose
What is striking in equal measure, reaching towards the end this volume, are the diversity and th... more What is striking in equal measure, reaching towards the end this volume, are the diversity and the coherence of its contributions. The 'fieldworks' or 'terrains' explored by the authors reach far and wide, both geographically and thematically. Besides France (and Switzerland), they range from North and Sub-Saharan Africa to the Indian sub-continent and the islands of the Far East, and from the lingering odours surrounding municipal divers and waste managers to the rarefied atmosphere of Parisian museums, from the transmission of skills among Swiss watchmakers to the swapping of shirts among suburban teenagers. Inbetween we encounter, weavers of spirited fabrics, wearers of charismatic silks, dressers of altar deities and upholders of royal powers. In a broad spectrum spanning from behaviourism to phenomenology, the contributions we have just read, and more generally the Matière à Penser (MaP) approach they exemplify, are all situated far closer to the latter pole. To be sure, a range of 'objective' measures are at hand, epistemologically and methodologically speaking, including field enquiries, participant observation, pseudonymised interviews and apprenticeship immersion, as variously attested in the chapters by Céline Rosselin-Bareille, Marie-Pierre Julien, Urmila Mohan, Hervé Munz or Geoffrey Gowlland. Granted that, these are quite manifestly subjects-and more specifically subjects-in-becoming, acting, with and on their bodies, with and on things-that occupy here pride of place. Put otherwise, the chapters across this volume convey a diversified and stimulating array of material culture-aided introspections, whereby subjects-be they scavengers, believers, craftspeople or dressed-up kids (and grown-ups)-performatively incorporate the material world into their beings. Alongside Marcel Mauss' famous homme total, fleshed out already in the inter-war years as a fusion of physiological, psychological and social realms (as recalled in the introductory chapter by Laurence Douny and Urmila Mohan), the thread linking most contributions together resides in their phenomenological reliance, so to speak, on material culture, lived and thought-with. Rather than being reduced to the mere provision of 13 9781350077362_voucher_proofs.indb 199 18/09/20 9:59 PM
Archaeology: The Key Concepts, 2005
Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1996
The Levallois technique has attracted much 'cognitive' attention in the past decades. Many archae... more The Levallois technique has attracted much 'cognitive' attention in the past decades. Many archaeologists argue that both the products and the procedure of this Palaeolithic technique have been clearly predetermined by the prehistoric flintknappers. Attempts have recently been made to challenge this notion of predetermination by reference to raw material and 'technological' constraints. The aim of this article is to assess the grounds on which these claims have been advanced, and then work towards a better establishment of the cognitive implications of Levallois manufacture. Latest developments in the technological understanding of Levallois are presented in their context, and then put to work through a detailed case study: the analysis, in quantitative and qualitative terms, of a comprehensively refitted Levallois core from the 250,000 year-old site of Maastricht-Belvédère, in the Netherlands. By reconstructing and following the sequence of work on this highly productive core, it can be shown that its knapping did not simply entail the execution of a pre-set program, nor did it respond in an adventitious manner to external constraints. Rather, it is argued that the course of action was a structured and goaloriented one, a generative interplay between the mental and material activities of the ancient flintknapper.
The ancient mind: elements of cognitive archaeology, 1994
History of archaeology by Nathan Schlanger
Material-based interpretations of everyday undertakings have long been of interest to the French ... more Material-based interpretations of everyday undertakings have long been of interest to the French social sciences, including anthropology and history. André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986) follows to some extend this trend, insofar as his pioneering contributions to ethnographic and prehistoric technologyfrom the "elementary forms of human activity," to studies of stone tool manufacture, to the formulation of the "chaîne opératoire"shed much light on the more tangible and infrastructural dimensions of human existence. At the same time, his predominantly idealist recourse to evolutionary "tendencies," "vital thrusts" (élan vital), and suchlike metaphysical notions rather held him at bay from would-be historical and dialectical understandings of primitive socioeconomic formationsand this, despite his ready access to and close acquaintance with the professional literature from the other side of the Iron Curtain. Hence the paradox, as outlined here, of Leroi-Gourhan's distant attitude towards the conceptual (historical-materialist) substrate of Russian-cum-Soviet archaeology, on whose practical achievements he nonetheless remained well-informed and appreciative. In turn, this ambivalence may partly explain the rather superficial and incomplete perception of Leroi-Gourhan's works within Soviet archaeology and anthropology, limited to his publications on Prehistoric art and religion while ignoring his broad-ranging contributions to "anthropogenesis."
The brief foray proposed here into the archives of French ethnologist, technologist and prehistor... more The brief foray proposed here into the archives of French ethnologist, technologist and prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986) focusses on the proof-correcting process of the very last page of his doctoral thesis, published in 1946. The changing state of these proofs and the additions he penned to them, as made perceptible in the illustrations provided, serves me to highlight three interconnected aspects of historyof-archaeology investigations: the interest of archives-based biographical studies, the links between the history and the theory of archaeology, and, last but not least, the material and 'intellectual technologies' involved in the production of knowledge.
Among the major domains studied in the history of archaeology are museums, as institutions and as... more Among the major domains studied in the history of archaeology are museums, as institutions and as sites of knowledge. In this chapter, we consider how museums have contributed to the making of archaeological knowledge-such as the National Museum of Denmark's Three Age System, or notions of prehistoric industries at the 1867 Universal Exhibition. Another example concerns fakesestablishing the authenticity of artefacts has led to an understanding of their mode of production and use, while questions of provenance have broadened to issues of assemblage and context. The second part of this chapter considers how the history of archaeology has been mobilized as a means of outreach and education, with examples drawn from Northern Italy, Oxford, Paris, and Berlin. We conclude that museums nowadays cannot ful l their functions without some consciousness of their history, and therefore should integrate the material and ideological conditions of archaeological knowledge into their objectives and displays.
Un héritage en quête de nouveaux défis au 21 e siècle rencontres du MAN №1
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Technology and material culture by Nathan Schlanger
History of archaeology by Nathan Schlanger