I invite you to discover this brand new book, to be published on February 10 by Folio Histoire editions.
• The book How do you know how early Homo Sapiens felt? Their daily life told through the traces they left behind. The characters in this book are the women, men and children who populated Europe 40,000 to 10,000 years ago. Archaeological excavations allow us today to know many details about their daily life, such as what they ate. But it is not these aspects, already well known, that have been retained here. The author has chosen to study the uses of the body of these Homo sapiens: we have a fairly precise idea of their appearance from the skeletons found, their clothing, but also the way in which they were treated or moved. The vestiges of their activities sometimes make it possible to find their gestures, their postures. Sophie de Beaune has sought to highlight everything that is generally considered invisible and out of reach, a sort of snub to art historians and other non-specialists in prehistory who claim that we will never know anything about the daily life or the intimacy of our European ancestors. The vestiges, certainly fleeting and evanescent, are not so rare: it is enough to know how to read them.
• The author Professor at the University of Lyon and researcher at the “Archaeology and Sciences of Antiquity” laboratory in Nanterre, Sophie Archambault de Beaune studies the technical behavior and cognitive skills of prehistoric man. She has notably published For an archeology of gesture (2000), Man and tool (2008), What is Prehistory? (History Folio no 251, 2016), Our prehistory. The Great Adventure of the Human Family (2016) and co-edited Cognitive Archeology and Human Evolution (2009), La Préhistoire au present. Words, images, knowledge, fictions (2021) and New Advances in the History of Archeology (2021). She directs the “Le Passé recomposé” collection at CNRS Éditions.