François Daleau. Founder of prehistoric archaeology.
Jerome Million| N° d'inventaire | 23537 |
| Format | 16 x 24 |
| Détails | 170 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Grenoble, 2021 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782841373864 |
The aim of this book is to uncover what guided François Daleau (1845-1927) in his research during the decades that proved crucial to the history of Paleolithic prehistory, a period in which he was heavily involved with his excavations of the decorated cave of Pair-non-Pair. The name of François Daleau has now been forgotten, but in his time he was recognized by the greatest. This work was made possible by examining the thousands of handwritten pages bequeathed by François Daleau upon his death, in the form of notebooks, excursion logs, draft letters, reading notes, inventories, etc. I have avoided both a finalistic reading and a "hagiographic" presentation, two biases that have often marked historiographical works. On an epistemological level, the preserved documents and published texts were used as many orders of clues capable of circumscribing the way in which Daleau conceived his research, in order to situate him in the (heterogeneous) scientific framework of his time. I wanted to clarify what leads a discoverer in his approach and, to do this, I compared François Daleau's texts with the works of his contemporaries, taking care not to make them take on a meaning that was often only conferred on them later. The rediscovery of figures considered secondary is likely to show that conceptual frameworks and methods very different from those used today were possible and thus to open up new directions of research. This analysis allowed me to show that François Daleau played a major role in prehistory research and made an important contribution to the discipline then in its infancy. He constructed a functional prehistory that integrates the long timescale of archaeological stratigraphy. His approach aims to focus attention on the archaeological fact itself. His method relies on both a remarkable sense of observation and a critical sense that allows him to make a fair assessment of the data collected. From prospecting techniques to recording field data to identifying and resolving specifically archaeological problems, François Daleau has built a discipline in its own right.
The aim of this book is to uncover what guided François Daleau (1845-1927) in his research during the decades that proved crucial to the history of Paleolithic prehistory, a period in which he was heavily involved with his excavations of the decorated cave of Pair-non-Pair. The name of François Daleau has now been forgotten, but in his time he was recognized by the greatest. This work was made possible by examining the thousands of handwritten pages bequeathed by François Daleau upon his death, in the form of notebooks, excursion logs, draft letters, reading notes, inventories, etc. I have avoided both a finalistic reading and a "hagiographic" presentation, two biases that have often marked historiographical works. On an epistemological level, the preserved documents and published texts were used as many orders of clues capable of circumscribing the way in which Daleau conceived his research, in order to situate him in the (heterogeneous) scientific framework of his time. I wanted to clarify what leads a discoverer in his approach and, to do this, I compared François Daleau's texts with the works of his contemporaries, taking care not to make them take on a meaning that was often only conferred on them later. The rediscovery of figures considered secondary is likely to show that conceptual frameworks and methods very different from those used today were possible and thus to open up new directions of research. This analysis allowed me to show that François Daleau played a major role in prehistory research and made an important contribution to the discipline then in its infancy. He constructed a functional prehistory that integrates the long timescale of archaeological stratigraphy. His approach aims to focus attention on the archaeological fact itself. His method relies on both a remarkable sense of observation and a critical sense that allows him to make a fair assessment of the data collected. From prospecting techniques to recording field data to identifying and resolving specifically archaeological problems, François Daleau has built a discipline in its own right.