LECTURE By Professor Nathan Schlanger – | Ecole des chartres – UMR Trajectoires, Paris, CRFJ
CONFERENCE BUILDING 72 ROOM 505 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
The Making of Chaine Opératoire in the French Research Tradition Special Lecture by Professor Nathan Schlanger
The identification, description, and interpretation of various objects and artefacts recovered from the past depend on the theoretical elaboration of « technology », understood as the study of techniques in the social sciences. ln the French research tradition, these studies date to the beginnings of the 20 th Century, with the impetus of anthropologist M. Mauss and the creation of the Musée de l’Homme. ln both ethnology and prehistory, technology is associated with André Leroi-Gourhan, working both in the museum and in the field: from the 1930 to the 1960, he developed several key concepts to the study of techniques, including the chaîne opératoire, the sequences of embedded actions from raw material to finished product.
