La guerre préhistorique au prisme de la préhistoire française de la Grande Guerre à la Seconde Guerre mondiale (1914–1939)

This article intends to analyse the idea of prehistoric war in French anthropology during the 1914–1939 period. This work consists firstly in understanding how the First World War impacts the main periodical scientific publications concerning the subject of war itself and more precisely our object of study, prehistoric war. Next, the research is pursued in the scientific literature to find the structuring elements of the thought about warfare and identify the explanatory theories. In a third part, we analyse the comparative approach between prehistoric war and primitive war. The results emphasize a certain abandonment of the subject of prehistoric war, due mainly to the weakness of explanatory theories and the distance between the two different approaches, the one of prehistorians and the other of ethnologists.

DOI 10.4467/00786500.ORG.19.003.11324