Priest, naturalist, archaeologist and first holder of the Prehistory chair at the Collège de France from 1929 onwards, Henri Breuil put the study of prehistory on a scientific footing, using empirical methods and standardized field description protocols.
Although he discussed the antiquity of mankind in the context of religious and scientific debates, his main focus was on fieldwork, between excavations and parietal surveys. His research is described as " prehistoric ethnography ".
His work on the Altamira, Font-de-Gaume, Niaux, Combarelles and Lascaux caves, for example, established a stylistic chronology for the Upper Palaeolithic (Aurignacian-Magdalenian). He also introduced a comparative approach between European and African sites (notably in Namibia and South Africa), placing rock art within a framework of social and symbolic interpretation.
At the Collège de France (1929-1947), his lectures on Prehistory, still a marginal discipline, combined : field observations, graphic surveys, lithic typology and notions of chronostratigraphy, but also the definition of the great graphic " schools " of the Upper Palaeolithic, with the assumption of a complex thought system at the origin of these representations, prefiguring an articulation between the consideration and spatial investment of caves and the cohesion of prehistoric social structures.
Note written by Juliette Henrion (doctorate attached to the Chair of Paleoanthropology, CIRB-Collège de France-CNRS /UMR 7241 - Inserm U1050).
