Jean Polet

Jean Polet (* 1944 ) is a French archaeologist (5th to 18th century) and ethnologist who mainly deals with Mauritania , Mali and the Ivory Coast , but also with the art history of these areas from the 16th century and the protection before Art theft .

Life

Polet received his doctorate in 1988 with a thesis on the ethnology of a West African lagoon, the Aby lagoon in the southeast of the Ivory Coast. The area - he lived in the country for a total of twelve years - is part of today's Parc national des îles Ehotilé . He then worked for three years as a curator at the Musée des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie and taught at the Louvre . Ten excavation campaigns led him to prepare for a thèse de troisième cycle for further specialization in Mauritania, especially in Tegdaoust and Koumbi Saleh . There he worked on issues of urbanization and the Trans-Saharan trade in the Middle Ages.

Gbéklé-sè vessel made of bronze, Ivory Coast, approx. 1850–1900

He also dealt with the inland delta of the Niger and the south-west of Mali. This was followed by art-historical work on the aforementioned inland delta and on the determination and protection of the African cultural heritage, with his attention increasingly focused on art trade and theft.

In his historical-archaeological work, the methodology of which he traces back to Jean Devisse with a view to the written sources, he took oral tradition into account early on.

Polet was director of Unité propre de recherche 311 from 1995 to 2010 , then of the Recherches sur l'Afrique group of Unité mixte de recherche 7041 . He was also responsible for the Arts d'Afrique (African Art) section in the Histoire Culturelle et Sociale de l'Art (cultural and social history of art) working group at the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art until 2010. Until his retirement in 2010, he worked as professor for Archeology et d'Histoire des arts de l'Afrique subsaharienne (archeology and art history of sub-Saharan Africa) at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne .

Jean Polet was the founder and until 2010 director of the journal Afrique: Archeologie & Arts .

Publications (selection)

• Fouille d'un quartier de Tegdaoust (Mauritanie orientale): urbanization, architecture, occupation de l'espace construit , Editions Recherches sur les Civilizations , Paris 1985.
• with Jean Devisse, Samuel Sidibé: Vallées du Niger: itinérance africaine, 1994-1996 , Sépia. Paris 1994.
• with Edmond Bernus, Gérard Quéchon (Ed.): Empreintes du Passé , Éditions de l'Aube, 1997. ( online , PDF)
• with Laurence Garenne-Marot: Présupposés et subjectivité dans l'approche des sites médiévaux ouest africains. Tumulus et sites d'habitat? Le cas de Sintiou Bara (Moyenne Vallée du Sénégal) , Society of Africanist Archaeologists, 13th Biennal Conference, Poznań Archaeological Museum, Poland, June 3–6. September 1996, Dossiers et Recherches sur l'Afrique, n ° 4 (1997) 31-51.
• Enjeux des recherches archeologiques franco-maliennes de Thial (région de Ténenkou) , Actualités de la recherche au Mali, février, n ° 18, Bamako 2004, pp. 7-10.
• with Claude Richir, Bernard Saison: Le "Tombeau à colonnes" de Koumbi Saleh (Hodh oriental, Mauritanie) , in: Afrique: Archeologie & Arts 3 (2004–2005) 49–62.
• with Rogier Michiel Alphons Bedaux, Klena Sanogo, Annette Schmidt (eds.): Recherches archéologiques à Dia dans le Delta Intérieur du Niger (Mali): bilan des saisons de fouilles 1998-2003 , Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde Leiden n ° 33, Research School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies, Leiden 2005.
• Archeology program, archeology preventive au Sahara: two outils, two méthodes pour one ou two archeologies? , Lecture at the Colloque de Nouakchott, January 2007, in: L'archéologie préventive en Afrique: enjeux et perspectives , Sepia, Paris 2008, pp. 39–46.

Web links

• Jean Polet , Archeology et Sciences de l'Antiquité

Remarks

1. ↑ Archeology of the Iles du Pays Eotilé (lagoon Aby, Côte d'Ivoire) , thèse, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 3 vols., 1988.