Gabriel Camps (May 20, 1927 – September 7, 2002) was a French archaeologist and social anthropologist, the founder of the ''

Encyclopédie berbère ''Encyclopédie berbère'' (English: ''Berber Encyclopaedia'') is a French-language encyclopaedia dealing with subjects related to the Berber peoples (''Imazighen'' in Berber language), published both in print editions and in a partial online ...

'' and is considered a prestigious scholar on the history of the

Berber people , image = File:Berber_flag.svg , caption = The Berber flag, Berber ethnic flag , population = 36 million , region1 = Morocco , pop1 = 14 million to 18 million , region2 = Algeria , p ...

Biography

Gabriel Camps was born in

Misserghin Misserghin is a city in Boutlélis District, Oran Province, Algeria. Its territory is mainly covered by a salt lake called the ''Sebkha of Oran''. In city, the known fruit clementine were discovered by Father Clément Rodier in 1892. Dr. Ch ...

French Algeria French Algeria (french: Alger to 1839, then afterwards; unofficially , ar, الجزائر المستعمرة), also known as Colonial Algeria, was the period of French colonisation of Algeria. French rule in the region began in 1830 with the ...

. He attended secondary school in

Oran Oran ( ar, وَهران, Wahrān) is a major coastal city located in the north-west of Algeria. It is considered the second most important city of Algeria after the capital Algiers, due to its population and commercial, industrial, and cultural ...

, and studied later in

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...

. In 1961, he graduated from Algiers University with a PhD thesis about the

protohistorical Protohistory is a period between prehistory and history during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted the existence of those pre-literate groups in their own writings. For example, in ...

monuments and

burial rites ''Burial Rites'' (2013) is a novel by Australian author Hannah Kent, based on a true story. Background Kent was given inspiration to write Burial Rites during her time as an exchange student in Iceland when she was 17, where she learnt the s ...

of Berber people, called ''Aux origines de la Berbérie''. ''Monuments et rites funéraires protohistoriques'', as well as with a second thesis on the

Numidia Numidia ( Berber: ''Inumiden''; 202–40 BC) was the ancient kingdom of the Numidians located in northwest Africa, initially comprising the territory that now makes up modern-day Algeria, but later expanding across what is today known as Tunis ...

n king

Masinissa Masinissa ( nxm, , ''MSNSN''; ''c.'' 238 BC – 148 BC), also spelled Massinissa, Massena and Massan, was an ancient Numidian king best known for leading a federation of Massylii Berber tribes during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), ulti ...

. In 1959, Gabriel Camps entered the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

(CNRS). After the independence of Algeria, he worked from 1962 to 1969 as director of the Centre de recherches anthropologiques, préhistoriques et ethnologiques (CRAPE) and of the National Ethnographic and Prehistoric Museum of Bardo at Algiers. He also directed the Institut de recherches sahariennes and the scientific journal ''Libyca''. In 1969, he moved to

Aix-en-Provence Aix-en-Provence (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Ais de Provença in classical norm, or in Mistralian norm, ; la, Aquae Sextiae), or simply Aix ( medieval Occitan: ''Aics''), is a city and commune in southern France, about north of Marseille. ...

, where he worked as professor at the

University of Provence The University of Provence Aix-Marseille I (french: Université de Provence) was a public research university mostly located in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. It was one of the three Universities of Aix-Marseille and was part of the Academy of ...

. There he founded the Laboratoire d'anthropologie et de préhistoire de la Méditerranée occidentale (LAPMO), frequented by numerous students, mostly from Maghreb countries. Gabriel Camps undertook research and published on the prehistoric and pre-Roman epochs of North Africa, but also on the Berber kingdoms, the Libyan script and the

Punic people The Punic people, or western Phoenicians, were a Semitic people in the Western Mediterranean who migrated from Tyre, Phoenicia to North Africa during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' – the Latin equivalent of the ...

. Most of this work focussed on Berber history, and in 1984 he was the founder and first editor-in-chief of the ''

'', launched under the aegis of UNESCO. The largest part of Camps's research was done on Algeria, although he worked also on

Corsica Corsica ( , Upper , Southern ; it, Corsica; ; french: Corse ; lij, Còrsega; sc, Còssiga) is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of ...

. His wife, Henriette Camps-Fabrer (1928-2015) was a French

cultural anthropologist Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portman ...

and wrote several books about the jewellery of the Berbers in Algeria and the Maghreb between the 1970s and 1990. Camps died in 2002 in Aix-en-Provence; on his death, the Algerian Minister of Culture expressed his condolences to the University.

Works

*''Afrique du Nord au féminin'', Perrin, 1992. *''

'', Édisud, 1985-2002 : 25 sections and more than 4,000 pages, half of them written by Camps. *''Berbères, mémoire et identité'', Errance, 1987. Republished in 2007, at Éditions Actes Sud *''Préhistoire d'une île''. La Corse des origines, 1988, Errance, 1991. *''Introduction à la Préhistoire'', Perrin, Collection Point Histoire, 1982. *''Atlas préhistorique du Midi méditerranéen français'', 1978-1981 (a joint work directed by Camps) *''Les Berbères, aux marges de l'Histoire'', Hespérides, 1980. *''Épipaléolithique méditerranéen'', 1975 (a joint work directed by Camps) *''L'Homme de Cro-Magnon'', 1970, Faton, 1992 (a joint work directed by Camps)

References

External links

Biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Camps, Gabriel People from Oran Province 1927 births 2002 deaths 20th-century French historians University of Provence faculty Corresponding members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Berberologists French people of colonial Algeria