Cet événement vise à faire un état des lieux des recherches actuelles sur l’identification des individus en archéologie préhistorique, en explorant les méthodes permettant d’identifier des individus à partir des vestiges archéologiques, qu’il s’agisse de matériaux lithiques ou d’autres types de restes. Il s’agira également de discuter des avantages, des limitations et des perspectives de ces approches, tout en réfléchissant à ce que ces recherches peuvent révéler sur l’organisation sociale et économique des sociétés passées.

Presentation

The identification of individuals remains a marginal field of research in prehistoric archaeology. Since the 19th century, our discipline has sought to recognize characteristic objects within archaeological assemblages—first to establish a relative chronology of prehistory, and then to identify archaeological cultures. As a result, these objects - often stone tools - have primarily been understood as technical markers of a given period or culture, rather than as the products of individual craftsmanship. 

However, in the 1970s, North American archaeology identified the individual as one of the main factors behind the variability of prehistoric artefacts, alongside technical traditions, functional properties of tools, and the raw materials used—thus placing the individual at the core of research. This phenomenon later resonated in France, where, in the 1980s, several studies highlighted the influence of individual variability in flintknapping, particularly in blade production. 

Following these pioneering studies, certain research themes - such as learning processes and the recognition of skill levels - continued to generate significant interest. However, the identification of individuals has not really taken off, although studies have continued to be published on the subject at more or less regular intervals, especially in recent years in the field of lithic industries.

Approximately 50 years after J.N. Hill and J. Gunn paved the way (The Individual in Prehistory, 1977, Academic Press), it seems timely to take stock of the current state of research. From the Palaeolithic to the Metal Ages, considering the full range of available materials, how can we attempt to identify individuals through the various types of remains at our disposal? What methods can we employ for this purpose? What
are their conditions of application, their levels of resolution, and more generally, their advantages and limitations? By using these approaches, what insights can we hope to gain about the social and economic organizations of past societies? Finally, how can we envision the future of this ambitious but undoubtedly complex research theme?

Program day 1 - 26 february

10:00 - 10:30 Welcome

10:30 - 10:40 Organisers - Welcome speech

10:40 - 11:10 [To be specified] - Introduction

• 11:10 - 11:40 Sonja Tomasso, Dries Cnuts - Tracing the individual through use-wear: A participatory approach to wood carving experiments
• 11:40 - 12:10 Olivier Touzé, Veerle Rots - A fine line between left and right?
• 12:10 - 12:40 Lars Anderson - Learning to be Aurignacian: Individual learning and social process forty thousand years before present

12:40 - 13:50 Lunch Break

• 13:50 - 14:20 Elisa Caron-Laviolette - Rekindling the hearth: Domestic practice and place memory at the Magdalenian site of Étiolles
• 14:20 - 14:50 Manon Bocquel, Vincent Delvigne, Mathieu Langlais - The devil is in the details: Technique mania in flint debitage as a marker for individual practice
• 14:50 - 15:20 Pierre Allard, Solène Denis - Signatures in stone: Identifying individual knapper variability in the Early Neolithic
• 15:20 - 15:50 Moiken Hinrichs - Craftful minds - Technical individuality in production processes

15:50 - 16:10 Coffee break

• 16:10 - 16:40 Sofus Stenak - Unmasking the maker: Identifying individual flint dagger makers in Late Neolithic Scandinavia
• 16:40 - 17:10 Vanessa Forte - Tracing individuals through ceramic technology: Novel insights from experimental archaeology and cognitive studies
• 17:10 - 17:40 Quentin Favrel - "C’est l’histoire d’un type": An essay on theoretical ceramology

17:40 - 18:30 Drink

Program day 2 - 27 february

08:30 - 09:00 Welcome

• 09:00 - 09:30 Olivia Rivero, Xabier Eguilleor-Carmona, Miguel Garcia-Bustos, Ana María Mateo-Pellitero - First identification of a single artist in Palaeolithic art: The Hornos de la Peña cave (Cantabria, Spain)
• 09:30 - 10:00 Solange Rigaud - Body ornaments and the materialization of selves in Prehistory
• 10:00 - 10:30 Pauline Coste - "We found the face of..." Reconstruct the faces of Paleolithic individuals according to their skulls: Scientific reality or chimera?

10:30 - 10:50 Coffee Break

• 10:50 - 11:20 Laura Waldvogel - Identifying 'wealthy' burials: A methodological approach with the Linearbandkeramik culture as a case study
• 11:20 - 11:50 Rubén Castillo La Torre - Can Missert, more than a century later: Reassessment of a key Late Bronze Age necropolis in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula
• 11:50 - 12:20 Laura Waldvogel, Méryl Defours Rivoira, Élisa Eschenlauer, Marie Besse – A game of stones. Social status and ethnicity in West Sumba’s burials (Indonesia): An ethnoarchaeological approach

12:20 - 12:35 Organisers - Conclusion

12:35 - 14:00 Lunch