Laurent Olivier
Prof. Laurent Olivier is general Curator of the Department of Celtic and Gallic Archaeology at the National Museum of Archaeology in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (France). His work is focused on the social and anthropological approach of European Iron Age, specially through Archaeology of Salt and Early Celtic Art. From 2001 to 2017, he has been carrying out an international research project, combining archaeological excavations to geophysics, geo-archaeology, bio-stratigraphy, GIS and archaeo-geography: this programme was devoted to the study in the long duration of the “Briquetage de la Seille”, a “proto-industrial” salt production centre located in Eastern France. Olivier’s research interests include history and theory of the archaeological discipline, as well as the archaeology of the Contemporary Past. Among his personal books, he has published:
- “Le Sombre abîme du Temps. Mémoire et archéologie” (Paris: Le Seuil, 2008), which is available in English (“The Dark Abyss of Time. Archaeology and Memory” Lanham: Altamira, 2011)
- "Nos ancêtres les Germains. les archéologues français et allemands au service du nazisme", which is devoted to the study of the “germanization” of European archaeology during the Nazi period (Paris: Tallandier, 2012)
- "Le Pays des Celtes. Mémoires de la Gaule" (Paris: le Seuil, 2018), about the memory of Gallic and Celtic past.
- "César contre Vercingétorix" (Paris: Belin, 2019) which is devoted to the historical and archaeological memory of the Gallic leader Vercingetorix.
- His last book, "Ce qui est arrivé à Wounded Knee. 29 décembre 1890" (Paris: Flammarion, 2021) is an enquiry about the massacre of about 300 Sioux Lakota by the American Army and the transmission of its memory.
Phone: (33) 1 39 10 13 12
Address: Musée d'Archéologie nationale
Place Charles de Gaulle 78105 Saint-Germain-en-Laye cedex (France)
- “Le Sombre abîme du Temps. Mémoire et archéologie” (Paris: Le Seuil, 2008), which is available in English (“The Dark Abyss of Time. Archaeology and Memory” Lanham: Altamira, 2011)
- "Nos ancêtres les Germains. les archéologues français et allemands au service du nazisme", which is devoted to the study of the “germanization” of European archaeology during the Nazi period (Paris: Tallandier, 2012)
- "Le Pays des Celtes. Mémoires de la Gaule" (Paris: le Seuil, 2018), about the memory of Gallic and Celtic past.
- "César contre Vercingétorix" (Paris: Belin, 2019) which is devoted to the historical and archaeological memory of the Gallic leader Vercingetorix.
- His last book, "Ce qui est arrivé à Wounded Knee. 29 décembre 1890" (Paris: Flammarion, 2021) is an enquiry about the massacre of about 300 Sioux Lakota by the American Army and the transmission of its memory.
Phone: (33) 1 39 10 13 12
Address: Musée d'Archéologie nationale
Place Charles de Gaulle 78105 Saint-Germain-en-Laye cedex (France)
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Papers by Laurent Olivier
This bbok is first and foremost an investigation to establish what truly happened. First-person accounts of the events have been cross-referenced and compared, to create a precise timeline. But the book is also concerned with Wounded Knee's impact on the following generations, and how it still resonates in the American society today, revealing what it means to be Native American in the U.S.
Over the past decade, Walter Benjamin's revolutionary understanding of History and Art History has been acknowledged, but, curiously enough, very few comments of his work in relation to archaeology have been made. Since it isbased on the materiality of history, Benjamin's approach of the past is fundamentally archaeological. But what deeply challenges the conventional understanding of the past - what Benjamin calls Historicism - is that, being based on the material evidence of the past, the specific object of this new approach of history is not the vanished past, but the present itself. What constitutes the materiality of the present is, indeed, nothing else that the superimposition of all the duration(s) that are preserved into the present,; therefore, Benjamin's "materialistic history" is basically an "Archaeology of the Present". The challenging approach of the past within the present stresses the crucial importance of survival of the past (in German: Nachleben) and draws some inexpected links between contemporary Philosophy and History (Nietzsche), History and Art History (Benjamin), Art History and Anthropology (Warburg) that, together, are webed into this new Archaeology of the Present.