Theory and World Archaeology: Theory in French Archaeology

The aim of this session is to explore a range of current theoretical approaches in French archaeology. The debate on archaeology in France has been less visible than in Britain and North America and rather different in nature, but many of the same issues have been discussed. Speakers in this session include Françoise Audouze (Paris I) on palaeohistorical and technological approaches to the Upper Palaeolithic in France, Serge Cassen (Nantes) on phenomenology of the imagination and Armorican parietal art, Anick Coudart (Paris I) on why there is no post-processual archaeology in France, Jean-Pierre Legendre (Metz) on French archaeology in eastern France under Nazi occupation, and Laurent Olivier (Musée des Antiquités Nationales) on theoretical perspectives in French archaeology. The session is jointly organised by Chris Scarre (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge) and Laurent Olivier (Musée des Antiquités Nationales, St Germain-en-Laye). Papers will be delivered in English or French.

Theoretical archaeology in France and Britain

It is now almost twenty years since Audouze and Leroi-Gourhan described French archaeology as a 'Continental insularity'. How far have attitudes to theoretical archaeology changed in France during that period, and how closely do those changes compare with trends in British archaeology? The divergence between the two traditions which was so pronounced in the 1960s and 1970s has steadily narrowed in the post-processualist 1980s and 1990s. Yet theory remains a much less conspicuous feature of French archaeology and fundamental differences in attitude remain. French writers prominent in post-processualist archaeology in Britain have generally exerted little influence on the archaeology of their home country. One way of judging relations between the two traditions is to consider the British reaction to leading French archaeological publications during the past 20 years. Valuable insight is also gained by examining the changing role of theoretical considerations in the mainstream literature of French prehistory.

From technology to palaeohistory

The newest trend in French Palaeolithic studies can be qualified as palaeohistory based on comparative technology. It derives from the two former approaches: the chronostratigraphic approach of the François Bordes school and the synchronic palaeoethnological approach of the Leroi-Gourhan school. The new approach analyses correlated changes in lithic technology and typology over the long term. It results in identifying technological stages which define, along with "fossiles directeurs", both previously known cultural entities from the Late Glacial and new ones. It succeeds in explaining why technological changes occur in knapping techniques.

The second main trend is cognitive and is based like the previous one on technology, mostly on experimental work. It aims to identify and evaluate technical changes which imply changes in concepts, mental abilities and know-how, perception and anticipation. Some of its supporters argue strongly against the "final object fallacy" and in favour of technically conscious early prehistoric humans.

Why is there no post-processual archaeology in France?

As a large part of its vocabulary has been borrowed from French intellectuals, it may seem surprising that post-processual archaeology has not had any impact in France. The reasons for this are deeply rooted in French society and identity, but are barely visible as they are part of a double paradox.

Anglo-American scholars belong to an intellectual tradition which is essentially empirical, based on (sensory) experience; when confronted with an incoherence they tend to consider their conceptual approach inadequate rather than their observations. This leads them to search continually for new concepts (which agree better with their data). As for the French intellectual, he/she moves in a Cartesian tradition based on a reasoned and coherent representation of things. Phenomena are governed by a rationality complex and multidimensional, but which forms an indivisible whole. If and when the result of an analysis appears inconsistent, the French scholar will tend to discount his/her observations ­ not as irrational, but as unrepresentative. In order to confirm the abstract vision which unconsciously forms the basis of his social, political and intellectual identity, he or she permanently reviews their data. As a result, the quest of Anglo-American archaeologists for concepts and theories is viewed with perplexity or condescension by the French; and the French are seen by the Anglo-American as forever bogged down in their data.

This French preoccupation with coherent conceptual frameworks, and the fact that French society has never been "modern", result in a situation in which, without denying any of them, single binary relations (on which every intellectual and mental construct, and every creation of meaning are based) are always seen as insufficient to render reality. In what are called sciences de l'homme et de la société, the social dimension of history has never ceased to be predominant; this concerns equally those scholars who appeal to modernity and those who initiated the concept of post-modernity. For them, history or archaeology can only be the study of the interactions between human beings, nature and the diversity of other cultures.

For those French archaeologists who have managed to grasp the notion of post-processualism, it appears part of the history of an archaeology which is not theirs, or even a respectable exoticism.

The form of a town

What is customarily called 'Neolithic parietal art' or 'megalithic art' is, together with the study of stone alignments in western France, probably the only area of research which reproduces basically unchanged the terminology and interpretations of the 19th century. This paper will address epistemological questions relating to the language of the human sciences, and in particular that of the inexact sciences. Adopting a methodological principal from the work of Bachelard we shall try to make clear why a phenomenology of the imagination (attempted by Lautréamont as long ago as 1869) is in our view the most profitable direction for progress in the domain of symbols. The constant risk is that of basing intuitive interpretations entirely on arbitrary cultural values, especially where the archaeological context which might support the interpretation is completely masked. The problem is the same whether it relates to the quality of the materials, the techniques used to execute the engravings and their relative chronology, or finally the historico-cultural context in which they are situated.

Ideological propagands and archaeology in Alsace (eastern France) during the second annexation (1940-1944)

After the armistice of Rethondes in June 1940, the French province of Alsace was joined to Germany and integrated with bordering German province of Baden into the Gau Baden-Elsass. A period of four years ensued, during which the Nazis tried by all the means available to germanise the population as quickly as possible. One of the favourite themes of the Nazi propaganda was that Alsatians were descended from very early Germanic populations who settled themselves centuries ago in this territory, and that they were Volksdeutscher whose integration in the Reich was natural. Archaeological research played an important part in attempts to reinforce that theory, and it was accordingly especially favoured by the occupation authorities. This explains the rapid installation in Alsace by the German administration of a department in charge of archaeology (Landesamt für Ur- und Frühgeschichte). Besides rescue excavations and settlement survey, this service took part in propaganda exhibitions, the most famous being 2000 Jahre Kampfe am Oberrhein (2000 years of battles on the Upper Rhine). NSDAP's archaeological branch (the Reichsbund für Deutsche Vorgeschichte) was also interested in Alsace, studying the Mont Sainte-Odile hill-fort in order to demonstrate that it was a Germanic fortress.

The French response to the globalisation of archaeology

French archaeology finds its origins in the Enlightenment of the late 18th century. The discovery of 'Gaulish' remains coincided with the grasp in political consciousness of the role of the "nation". The new discipline of archaeology, in its practice of exhuming material traces of national origins, joined with the political project which legitimated the Republic by finding its roots in a cultural continuity going back through time immemorial, and inventing for it its own cultural tradition. More generally, the new vision of the past which was established with the Revolution situated the local history of the origins of the French nation in a global historical perspective, of universal relevance, which was the history of the whole of humankind. At the theoretical level, that new approach to 'national antiquities' depends on an ehtnographic reading of the remains of the past, and is at the same time characterised by a unilinear reconstruction of evolution which derives from the idea of historical progress.

Thus in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which investigates the meaning of archaeological remains and which seeks to produce or borrow a theory to explain them, the French tradition considers archaeological remains from an ethnographic perspective. In this sense, it places theory not at the stage of interpreting archaeological remains, as in Anglo-Saxon research, but much earlier, at the level of meaning held by the remains. In the French perspective, the archaeological remains, as material traces of human activity, provide evidence for the organisation of those activities, and, at a further remove, for the society which produced them.

The process of globalisation which has gathered speed in recent years throws this French model into crisis. The end of the Cold War, German reunification and the creation of a European community, as well as the development of the present-day multicultural societies, put in crisi not only the legitimacy of nation-states, but also of the historical and archaeological representations on which they rest. The current decline of nation-states, of which France provides the oldest European example, leads irreversibly to a revision of the historical interpretations from which the political structures derive their legitimacy. We are therefore faced today with a crisis in the French historical tradition in the broadest sense, along with, more generally by a calling into question of the paradigms on which rests our approach to the past.