Contested Deep Pasts: Negotiating the French-Anglophone Divide in Pleistocene Lithic Studies

This book offers the first in-depth analysis of French-Anglophone research conflicts in Palaeolithic archaeology.By carefully examining a range of case studies and discursive contexts, the author shows that French and Anglophone approaches to the lithic evidence are anchored in opposing cognitive frameworks.The mainstays of this division are outlined by drawing on the work of American philosopher Stephen C.Pepper, who captured the totality of credible Western thought in terms of four equitable world hypotheses.The book demonstrates that French lithic research gravitates towards contextualistic and organicistic modes of inquiry, whereas Anglophone approaches tend to rely on formistic and mechanistic modes of inquiry.The implications of this difficult condition for mutual understanding and critical practice are explored and it is argued that the French-Anglophone divide can only be satisfactorily navigated if practitioners endorse scientific pluralism, cultivate a more reflexive stance t