LESC, CNRS

Trévor Watkins, profesor emérito de la Universidad de Edimburgo, intervendrá el miércoles 5 de noviembre de 2025 en el marco del seminario interdisciplinario L’Échangeur, organizado por el LESC y el UMR 8068 TEMPS. Este seminario pretende ser un espacio de intercambio y diálogo con investigadores extranjeros de paso por Île-de-France. Permitirá a colegas —antropólogos, etnomusicólogos, prehistoriadores u otros— venir a debatir con los miembros de nuestros respectivos laboratorios sobre sus últimas investigaciones. También abrirá un espacio en el que podremos intercambiar opiniones con investigadores extranjeros invitados en el marco de los diferentes programas internacionales en los que participamos.

Si queremos avanzar en nuestra comprensión de la prehistoria, debemos integrar nuestros conocimientos arqueológicos en una comprensión del proceso evolutivo (cultural). Eso es lo que intenté con mi reciente libro, Becoming Neolithic, whose synthesis was framed in the context of cultural niche construction theory. Writing prehistory is very different from the writing of history. As 2025 is the centenary of Gordon Childe’s first major publication, and of the Abercromby Chair of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, to which he was appointed, it is appropriate to start by discussing how he reframed the writing of prehistory, and how popular and influential were his books and ideas (in particular, the Neolithic and urban revolutions. In the 1960s American archaeologist-anthropologists Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery and their colleagues (under the banner of “processualist” archaeology) attempted to update the writing of prehistory within the contemporary framework of evolution and eco-systems theory. Since then, evolutionary theory has been further transformed (the extended evolutionary synthesis) including the development of new fields, like (cultural) niche construction theory. At the same time systems theory has grown with new theoretical work on complexity and complex adaptive systems theory. These theoretical advances are challenging archaeologists, both researchers, and teachers, and students.