Abstract
The study of prehistory established itself as a scientific discipline during the second half of the nineteenth century. The main issues discussed by this new science centered on the origins of humankind, society, technology, art and religion; this intellectual process of the creation of ideas, concepts and categories was projected on the archaeological finds. When archaeological evidence was found that could be interpreted as proof of the existence of religious beliefs in Paleolithic times, there were various reactions and interpretations among prehistorians. The clash between evolutionism and the Judeo-Christian religious tradition was a key element in the development of these different discourses; these two viewpoints implied opposite ways of thinking about human nature. This paper discusses this diversity of narratives, specifically in the context of France, through the contributions of four authors, each with different ideologies and sociopolitical circumstances: Gabriel de Mortillet, Emile Cartailhac, Salomon Reinach and Henri Breuil.
Highlights
Several years after the birth of prehistory as a scientific discipline, the existence of some form of Paleolithic religiousness became accepted
Émile Cartailhac was greatly influenced by his teacher G. de Mortillet and was reticent at first to accept the existence of burials in the Paleolithic; in 1886, after a detailed study of the human remains found at several sites, he attributed the existence of clearly-defined burials to the Paleolithic, The skeleton prepared had been the object of the mysterious attention of the living, dressed with adornments, covered with red dust and probably hidden beneath a thin layer of earth and ashes [...] we have seen sites that reveal the same funerary rite. (Cartailhac, 1886: 460-470)
When he replaced G. de Mortillet as editor of the journal Matériaux pour l’histoire positive et philosophique de l’homme – which he renamed Matériaux pour l’histoire naturelle et primitive de l’homme – he avoided any anticlerical controversies and allowed the publication of papers by some openly Catholic researchers (Defrance-Jublot 2011: 304-310). He maintained this line in later years when he co-edited the journal L’Anthropologie in 1890 (Defrance-Jublot 2005: 76-78). He had liberated himself from the ideas of his mentor G. de Mortillet earlier, in the 1880s, when he approached a group of researchers who had formed around the doctor and anthropologist Paul Broca (Blankaert 1989) at La Société d’Anthropologie de Paris, which included Paul Topinard, Theodor Hamy and Marcellin Boule, among others
Summary
Several years after the birth of prehistory as a scientific discipline, the existence of some form of Paleolithic religiousness became accepted. Two main phenomena occurred in the case of the III French Republic: on one hand, the institutional separation of the Catholic Church and the French state together with the implementation of lay social morals; on the other, the establishment of religious freedom and different forms of worship (Baubérot 2004: 22-33) In this situation, religion could not be conceived as a private and intimate matter, but was a public and political affair. Four French prehistorians have been chosen, who followed one another and partially overlapped in time: Gabriel de Mortillet (18211898), Émile Cartailhac (1845-1921), Salomon Reinach (1858-1932) and Henri Breuil (18771961) These researchers were heterogeneous from the sociological and ideological points of view, and mark a certain succession of ideas regarding the existence of some form of religiousness in the Paleolithic. They reflect the diversity of opinions on this matter from a synchronic perspective
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