MAINTENANCE – The archaeologist warns against reading archeology that legitimizes gender inequalities in prehistory.
Jean Guilaine is study director at the EHESS and professor of archeology at the Collège de France. He publishes a beautifully illustrated book on the representation of women in the Neolithic: Women of yesterday. Images, myths and realities of the Neolithic feminine (Odile Jacob). That is approximately between 5800 and 25,000 years before our era. He refuses the historical analyzes of the XIXe and 20e centuries, in the light of the social debates of those times.
LE FIGARO. – How to tell the story of women in the Neolithic period, a long period for which we have no written source?
Jean GUILAINE. – The starting point is these numerous statuettes of women that have been found everywhere in the Middle East and in various European countries. This plethoric documentation is supplemented by numerous stelae, statue-menhirs (with almost life-size human representations), rock art data and, of course, burials. How to make all this documentation speak…
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