Gabriel de Mortillet

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Gabriel de Mortillet, 1895
Monument on the grounds of the Arena of Lutetia , as it was when it was built. The bronze bust on top was melted down in 1942.

Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet [ mɔrtiˈjɛ ] (born August 29, 1821 in Meylan near Grenoble , † September 25, 1898 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye ) was an important French prehistoric researcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of Paleolithic research as a scientific subject. His system of relative chronology of the Paleolithic based on stratigraphic observations became important.

Life

Mortillet came from a royalist family and was raised by Jesuits . He first studied mechanical engineering , later also geology and paleontology . As a staunch atheist and Republican, he took part in the February Revolution of 1848. He was exiled in 1849 under the chairmanship of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and withdrew to Switzerland and Italy , where he excavated the first Italian Neolithic site in Isolino in 1863. The exile was lifted in 1863, Mortillet returned to France and founded the first French prehistoric magazine, Matériaux pour l'histoire positive et philosophique de l'homme . In 1867 he was appointed director of the Musée des Antiquités Nationales (in the castle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye ) near Paris, and finally, in 1878, professor at the Ecole d'anthropologie .

Its main contribution is the classification and nomenclature of the great periods of the Paleolithic . This was first presented to the public on the occasion of the opening of the Musée des Antiquités Nationales in 1867 and only published two years later. In it he divides the Stone Age into 14 (later 9) ages. It is named after well-known type localities , some of which are still used today:

His main work is Le Préhistorique, antiquité de l'homme , published in 1892 and illustrated by his son Adrien de Mortillet .

In 1905, a memorial designed by the sculptor Alfred La Penne was erected on the grounds of the Lutetia Arena in the Latin Quarter in Paris. 1942, during the German occupation of France in World War II , the above-seated was bronze - bust melted down.

His extensive estate, consisting of notes, found notes and letters as well as offprints of his own and third-party publications, was purchased by Saarland University in the 1950s . It is kept at the Saarland University and State Library (SULB) and in the Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Near Eastern Archeology at the Saarland University.

Works (selection)

  • Géologie et minéralogie de la Savoie. In: Ann. Chambre Royale Agric. Comm. , 4, VIII. Imp. Nationale, Chambéry 1858
  • Notice sur l'origine du langage. In: Congrès International d'Anthropologie et de Archeologie , 4, 1869, pp. 285–286.
  • Essai d'une classification des cavernes et des stations sous abri, fondée sur les produits de l'industrie humaine. In: Materiaux pour l'histoire de l'Homme , Volume V, 1869
  • Le préhistorique antiquité de l'homme. C. Reinwald, Paris 1883 ( Deuxième Édition 1885)
  • La Formation de la Nation Française. Bibliothèque scientifique internationale, Volume 86. F. Alcan, Paris 1897

literature

  • Günther Junghans: Gabriel de Mortillet 1821–1898: A biography. Materials to present his ideas and contributions to research into the origins and history of humans (= Archaeological Reports. Vol. 1). German Society for Prehistory and Early History, Bonn 1987 ( digitized version at the German Society for Prehistory and Early History ).
  • Nathalie Richard: Archaeological arguments in national debates in late 19th-century France: Gabriel de Mortillet's La Formation de la nation FranÇaise (1897). In: Antiquity. Vol. 76, No. 291, pp. 177-184.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gabriel de Mortillet: Essai d'une classification des cavernes et des stations sous abri fondée surles produits de l'industrie humaine . In: Materiaux pour l'histoire de l'Homme , 5, Paris 1869, pp. 172-179
  2. ↑ Gabriel de Mortillet: Classification des diverses périodes de l'age de la pierre . In: Revue d'Anthropologie , I, Paris 1872, pp. 432-435.
  3. ^ Note on Paris Révolutionnaire.
personal data
SURNAME Mortillet, Gabriel de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mortillet, Louis Laurent Gabriel de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French prehistorian
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Meylan , Isere Department , France
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1898
Place of death Saint-Germain-en-Laye , Yvelines department , France