Learning outcomes

To enable the student to acquire : - an introduction to specific methods for studying the material culture of societies without writing in the field and in the laboratory - an anthropological vision of the problems linked to the biological evolution of man confronted with material creations (including figurative ones) in the different periods of Prehistory

Content

The course proposes to highlight the most significant phenomena from the origins of man in East Africa, some 4 to 6 million years ago, to the first textual sources in Western Europe. At different times and using specific methods, the most telling material witnesses are questioned with the aim of a comprehensive and dynamic analysis of societies without writing and of the individuals who make them up: the body, gestures, the relationship with the other and with the environment, and thought, grasped through the analysis of the remains of men and their works (tools, habitats, tombs, figurations), in terms of technology, subsistence, economy, social aspects, rituals, and symbolic expressions.

Assessment method

A written exam

Sources, references and any support material

J. Garanger, 1992, La préhistoire dans le monde, Paris, PUF, Nouvelle Clio

Language of instruction

Français