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PREHISTORY

La Préhistoire des autres, Perspectives archéologiques et anthropologiques

Directed by de Nathan Schlanger and Anne-Christine Taylor

The canonical vision of prehistory is that of man slowly standing up, going from the cut stone period to that of the polished stone, hunting then breeding and cultivating, and who confided their existentialist anguish to ornate caves. How does this ‘Western’ pattern adapt to other cultures than the European ones, which are not necessarily poured into the same mould? The question is presented in this work, the result of a conference held in 2010 at the musée du quai Branly in Paris. In doing so, it brings forward another pre-history ‘for the others’, whether in Senegambia (rich in megaliths) or in the pre-Colombian societies (where a barter economy was founded based on shells). Certain essays unveil a strong exoticism for beginners such as ‘La percussion tendre organique dans l’Acheuléen d’Afrique orientale’ (The tender organic percussion in Acheulean Eastern Africa). Others ask simple but delicate questions: how to compare without falling into reductive generalisations, the Magdalean camp of Pincevent (discovered by Leroi-Gourhan in 1964) and the current nomad camps of the Siberian taiga?


La Préhistoire des autres, Perspectives archéologiques et anthropologiques, directed by de Nathan Schlanger and Anne-Christine Taylor, La Découverte/INRAP, €28, 2012, 384 p.

La Préhistoire des autres, Perspectives archéologiques et anthropologiques - Directed by de Nathan Schlanger and Anne-Christine Taylor


Review published in the newsletter #274 - from 11 October 2012 to 17 October 2012

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