Arnaud Hurel
ORGANON, Volume 55, 2023, pp. 25-52
https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.23.002.18779At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, French prehistory underwent a conceptual and methodological overhaul in line with the movement affecting the human sciences at the time. This change was brought about by a new generation of prehistorians, but some of the earliest, including Émile Cartailhac, were also at the forefront of the movement. The Toulouse prehistorian was not a systemic thinker, but conducted research into, and dissemination and promotion of prehistory at both the national and international level. He played an active role in the main debates renovating prehistory and proposed a series of compromises that reconfigured prehistoric practice by the renovation of methods and the opening up of new areas of investigation.
Arnaud Hurel
ORGANON, Volume 54, 2022, pp. I-VIII
https://doi.org/10.4467/00786500.ORG.22.003.16953From the second half of the 19th century, prehistory developed, both theoretically and in the field, according to a European model. Concepts and vocabulary, but also collections and European sites, were established as axioms. This construction of prehistory took place during the expansion of ethnographic missions and colonial empires. This European prehistory with universal ambitions had to take into account an otherness, current and embodied by the savage, which had become an object of study for the emerging human sciences. From a historiographical point of view, many relationships remain to be clarified with regard to the interactions between European prehistory and the construction of a prehistory beyond Europe.