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This document provides biographical information about Andre Leroi-Gourhan, a French archaeologist and anthropologist. It details his educational background, including degrees in Russian and Chinese and studying ethnology under Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet. Extended research at the British Museum influenced his interest in technology across cultures. By 1936, he had published two books on Chinese bronzes and reindeer civilizations that revealed his focus on material culture. Fieldwork in Japan in the late 1930s included the first archaeological excavations. Between 1940-1945, he published a major work on the evolution of technology across cultures. His 1944 doctoral theses analyzed art and symbolism in Northern Eurasia and distinguished between recurrent symbols and underlying

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28 views1 page

Pligful

This document provides biographical information about Andre Leroi-Gourhan, a French archaeologist and anthropologist. It details his educational background, including degrees in Russian and Chinese and studying ethnology under Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet. Extended research at the British Museum influenced his interest in technology across cultures. By 1936, he had published two books on Chinese bronzes and reindeer civilizations that revealed his focus on material culture. Fieldwork in Japan in the late 1930s included the first archaeological excavations. Between 1940-1945, he published a major work on the evolution of technology across cultures. His 1944 doctoral theses analyzed art and symbolism in Northern Eurasia and distinguished between recurrent symbols and underlying

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Introduction xv

Humans."3 Thus Leroi-Gourhan was present during the dynamic transformation of


the old Trocadero Museum into the Musee de l'Homme (officially in 1937) and was
apparently heavily influenced by the experience. Even as an adjunct volunteer he was
given responsibility for the Far East and for the Arctic.
His first degree (1931) was in Russian, followed by another in Chinese (1933).
He then studied for the "Certificat d'Ethnologie," a program established by Marcel
Mauss and Paul Rivet in 1927. This put him in contact with the great names of French
ethnology, including Marcel Griaule, Michel Leiris, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Jacques
Soustelle. An extended period of research in the Department of Ethnology at the Brit­
ish Museum in 1933-34 reaffirme d a previously unfulfilled interest in technology:
"This prolonged immersion in English museums, with exposure to Egyptian sculp­
ture, Chinese ceramics, oriental carpets and steam engines crystallized all of my
latent tendencies."4 By the time his first two books were published in 1936, he had
already begun to collect data on technology around the world. Both of these books,
Bestiarie du bronze chinois and La Civilization du renne, reveal his interest in tech­
niques and material culture as cultural expressions every bit as meaningful as lin­
guistic utterances.
In the same year Leroi-Gourhan headed to Japan on a two-year ethnological
research and collecting mission. This research, which included work among the
Ainu, was truncated by the impending hostilities that would ultimately lead to the
outbreak of war. Nevertheless, it was during this mission that Leroi-Gourhan under­
took his first archaeological excavations. Upon his return to France, he was made a
member of the newly formed Centre National de la Recherche SCientifique (CNRS).
Between 1940 and 1945 he prepared and published one of his most important works,
Evolution et techniques, which remains virtually unknown in America. This enor­
mous work, published in two volumes (L'Homme et la matiere in 1943 and Milieu
et techniques in 1945), is a systematic and enduring cross-cultural synthesis of human
technology.
In 1944 he finished his These de lettres, Archeologie du Pacifique Nord (pub­
lished in 1945). His complementary thesis was entitled Documentspour l'art com­
pare de l'Eurasie septentrionale. This work sensitized him to a lack of cross-cultural
correspondence between form and meaning in material representation. He was thus
led to distinguish explicitly in his analysis of Paleolithic art between recurrent asso­
ciations of certain symbols, on the one hand, and the ideology behind the repre-

3. Quoted in Gaucher, op. cit., p. 303.


4. Ibid.

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