Lecture: Lascaux The politics of history

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Lecture LascauxThe politics of history

• Thursday 16 January 2003

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Key Terms

• Homo sapiens sapiens
• Neolithic period
• Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age
• Lascaux

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Pre-history to history(History of France,
chapter 1)
PART 1
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Timeline

• 40, 000 BCE Homo sapiens sapiens
• 40,000-6000 BCE OLD STONE AGE.
• Humans shaped by environment.
• 16,000-14,000 BCE Lascaux cave art
• 10,000-9,000 BCE Warming period
• Receding glaciers, rising water levels.
• 8,000 BCE Bow appears. Dogs domesticated.
• 6,000-1,800 BCE NEW STONE AGE (NEOLITHIC PERIOD).
  
  
• Gradual shift from hunting-gathering to settled
  farming. Edible plants, cultivation, herding.
  Tool-making, pottery. Humans shape environment.
  
• 1,800-700 BCE BRONZE AGE
• 700-100 BCE IRON AGE

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Monumental history(Lascaux, pp. 163)
PART 2
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Monument map, Paris
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Grande Arche de la Défense
(1989)
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Arc de Triomphe (1806-36)
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Place de la Concorde
(ancient Egypt / 1830)
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Arc du Carousel (1808)
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Pyramide du Louvre (1988)
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national memory

• prehistoric sites are in a sense the degree zero
  of national memory they are pure, empty forms
  that can be filled with whatever concepts,
  emotions or symbols we like
• (Lascaux, p. 189)

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memory traces

• every lieu de mémoire commemorative or memorial
  site is the product of perpetual reworking and
  endless tinkering with memorys traces
  
• (Lascaux, p. 177)