Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet (29 August 1821 – 25 September 1898), French
archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
and
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and v ...
, was born at
Meylan
Meylan (; frp, Mèlan) is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France. It is part of the Grenoble urban unit (agglomeration).
Population
Misuse of public money
In 2013, the newly reelected Mayor of Meylan Marie-Christine Tar ...
,
Isère
Isère ( , ; frp, Isera; oc, Isèra, ) is a landlocked department in the southeastern French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Named after the river Isère, it had a population of 1,271,166 in 2019.Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders = ...
college of
Chambéry
Chambéry (, , ; Arpitan: ''Chambèri'') is the prefecture of the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of eastern France. The population of the commune of Chambéry was 58,917 as of 2019, while the population of the Chambéry ...
and at the
Paris Conservatoire
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
. Becoming in 1847 proprietor of '' La Revue indépendante'', he was implicated in the
Revolution of 1848
The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europe ...
and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. He fled the country and during the next fifteen years lived abroad, chiefly in Italy.
In 1858 he turned his attention to
ethnological
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
research, making a special study of the Swiss lake-dwellings. He also issued three works on the evidence for early man in North Italy, the third making a then unprecedented association with the Ice Age. He returned to Paris in 1863, and soon afterwards was appointed curator of the newly created
Musée des Antiquités Nationales
The National Archaeological Museum (French: Musée d'Archéologie nationale) is a major French archaeology museum, covering pre-historic times to the Merovingian period (450–750 CE). It is housed in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the '' ...
at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris.
Inhabitants are called ''Saint-Germanois'' or ''Saint-Ge ...
, with responsibility for the Stone Age collections. He became mayor of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and in 1885 he was elected deputy for
Seine-et-Oise
Seine-et-Oise () was the former department of France encompassing the western, northern and southern parts of the metropolitan area of Paris.Broca assisted to found the French School of Anthropology. He died at
St Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye () is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, from the centre of Paris.
Inhabitants are called ''Saint-Germanois'' or ''Saint-Ge ...
on 25 September 1898.
Typological stages
Mortillet is best known for his clarification and ordering of the archeology of the
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος '' lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
. Where
Édouard Lartet
Édouard Lartet (15 April 180128 January 1871) was a French geologist and paleontologist, and a pioneer of Paleolithic archaeology.
Biography
Lartet was born near Castelnau-Barbarens, ' of Gers, France, where his family had lived for more than ...
had used fauna as a distinguishing feature – Mammoth against Reindeer – for his important discoveries, Mortillet realised that as fauna varied with latitude they were unreliable indicators, and proposed instead a classification by means of dwelling places: Alluvial or Cave epochs, for example. Later acknowledging the ambiguity in that system as well, he published a new classification in 1869, using type sites and their associated artifacts to distinguish and name periods: (
Chellian
In geology, and archeology, Chellian or Chellean was the name given by the French anthropologist G. de Mortillet to the first epoch of the Quaternary period when the earliest human remains were discovered. The word is derived from the French town ...
,
Mousterian
The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the lat ...
,
Solutrean
The Solutrean industry is a relatively advanced flint tool-making style of the Upper Paleolithic of the Final Gravettian, from around 22,000 to 17,000 BP. Solutrean sites have been found in modern-day France, Spain and Portugal.
Details
T ...
,
Magdalenian
The Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; French: ''Magdalénien'') are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. It is named after the type site of La Madel ...
, Robenhausen). His system may have subsequently been refined, but still remains in current use. However, whereas Mortillet believed his classifications were universal stages, with a
unilineal evolution
Unilineal evolution, also referred to as classical social evolution, is a 19th-century social theory about the evolution of societies and cultures. It was composed of many competing theories by various anthropologists and sociologists, who belie ...
, later thinking regards each culture as a more localised conglomerate, capable of overlapping in time with others, not necessarily lineally related.
Mortillet proposed the name "Marnian Epoch" as a replacement for the period usually called the Gallic, which extends from about five centuries before the Christian era to the conquest of
Gaul
Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during R ...
by
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...
. Mortillet generally objected to the term Gallic, as the civilization characteristic of the epoch was not peculiar to the ancient Gauls, but was common to nearly all Europe at the same date. The name is derived from the French département of Marne.
Stone age art
De Mortillet recognised the importance of the
mobiliary art
Portable art (sometimes called mobiliary art) refers to the small examples of Prehistoric art that could be carried from place to place, which is especially characteristic of the Art of the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic eras. Often made of ivo ...
discovered by Lartet and Christie, commenting of such bone carvings, “They are not the work of children. They are the childhood of art”. However he was unable to accept the authenticity of the much more extensive cave art that was coming to light, conservatively and stiffly rejecting Sautuola's discovery of the paintings in
Altamira
Altamira may refer to:
People
* Altamira (surname)
Places
*Cave of Altamira, a cave in Cantabria, Spain famous for its paintings and carving
*Altamira, Pará, a city in the Brazilian state of Pará
* Altamira, Huila, a town and municipality in ...
as the original work of palaeolithic man.Tim Murray, ''Milestones in Archeology'' (2007) p. 246
Published works
* ''Promenades au Musée de Saint-Germain'' (1869)
* ''Classification des diverses périodes de l'âge de la pierre'' (1873)
* ''Musée préhistorique'' (1881)
* ''Le préhistorique, antiquité de l'homme'' (1882)
* ''Les Nègres et la civilisation égyptienne'' (1884)
* ''Origines de la chasse, de la pêche et de l'agriculture'' (1890)
* ''Le préhistoire : origine et antiquité de l'homme'' (1900)