Alain Testart (Paris, 30 December 1945 – 2 September 2013) was a French social anthropologist, emeritus research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and member of the Laboratory for Social Anthropology at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...

. He specialized in primitives societies (like those of the

Australian Aborigines Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Isla ...

and the

hunter-gatherers A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

in general) and comparative anthropology. His research themes included:

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, marriage arrangements, funeral practices,

gift A gift or a present is an item given to someone without the expectation of payment or anything in return. An item is not a gift if that item is already owned by the one to whom it is given. Although gift-giving might involve an expectation ...

and exchange, typology of societies, the political, the evolution of the societies, and questions of interpretation in

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The us ...

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsc ...

. With his works Alain Testart argued for the autonomy of anthropology as a social science and, against the anti-evolutionism that has dominated social anthropology over the past century, for a sociologically founded evolutionism. With force of arguments he contested naturalist approaches of the evolution of the societies that draw their explanatory models from evolution in biology. Based on a critical review of the foundations of ethnology, in particular of the work of

Lewis H. Morgan Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December 17, 1881) was a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer. He is best known for his work on kinship and social structure, his theories of social ev ...

, Alain Testart has attempted to renew an almost forgotten tradition in ethnological research, basing himself on the data acquired by a century of research in

ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject ...

and

prehistoric archaeology Prehistoric archaeology is a subfield of archaeology, which deals specifically with artefacts, civilisations and other materials from societies that existed before any form of writing system or historical record. Often the field focuses on ages ...

. In his synthetic work ''Prior to history. The evolution of societies, from Lascaux to Carnac'' (2012) he has explained his scientific approach in a systematic way, and has designed a surprising panorama on the prehistory of the societies, including those of the Indo-European ensemble. With this book Alain Testart obtained a late recognition from a broad audience for his work as a sociological researcher. After his death a circle of friends and former colleagues has taken up the edition of unpublished works. The following article shortly presents the social-anthropological oeuvre of Alain Testart at the hand of three of his research themes: the anthropology of hunter-gatherers; concepts of comparative sociology, and the evolution of the societies. In the footnotes web links point towards abstracts, papers, articles in scientific reviews, book critiques by others, colloquia and resources for further reference. An extract of his copious bibliography has also been included.

An engineer in the social sciences

After graduating as an engineer from the ''École Nationale Supérieure des Mines'' in Paris, and after brief employment in an enterprise, Alain Testart began to study ethnology. In 1975 he received his doctorate with his thesis ''On the dualistic classifications in Australia: Essay on the evolution of social organization'' under the direction of Jacques Barrau. In 1982 he began working at the ''Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique'' (CNRS) and became, subsequently, a member of the team “Social appropriation of Nature” at the National Museum of Natural History, and of the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology at the Paris X – Nanterre University, where he carried out a number of educational assignments. Alain Testart was a member of the Laboratory for Social Anthropology at the ''

'' and an emeritus research directory at the CNRS.

Anthropology of the Hunter-Gatherers

The first works of Alain Testart treat the social organization of the

and of the

, peoples who did not engage in any form of agriculture or animal herding at the time of colonization (Australian Aboriginals, San, arctic and subarctic American Indians, Pygmies, etc.).

The opposition Gathering / Storage

His book ''The Hunter-Gatherers, or the Origins of Social Inequalities'' (1982) rapidly became a classic among prehistorians. It revisits the classical opposition between hunter–gatherers and agriculturalists (or horticulturalists). This opposition was accepted as valid in both ethnology and prehistoric archeology, as was the notion of the “

neolithic revolution The Neolithic Revolution, or the (First) Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an inc ...

” earlier advanced by

V. Gordon Childe Vere Gordon Childe (14 April 189219 October 1957) was an Australian archaeologist who specialised in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and t ...

: a radical transformation of social and economic structures that was said to mark the transition from an economy of gathering and hunting to one based on the domestication of plants and crops. In his book, Alain Testart points out that more than half of the hunter–gatherer societies known to ethnology, in fact, share the same characteristics as agricultural societies: a sedentary society which indicates village life; an increased demographic density (higher than neighboring agriculturalists); significant hierarchies, including slavery and the differentiation in social strata such as nobles and commoners. These are typically the American Indians of the Pacific coast, of California and the peoples of Southeastern Siberia. These peoples, who only exploit wild (undomesticated) food resources like salmon, acorns etc., collect them in large quantities during the season of abundance and store them in order to provide for sufficient foodstuffs during the remainder of the year. These hunter–gatherers live on their stored food just as the agriculturalists live on the reserves of grain they keep in their barns or silos. They thereby possess what Alain Testart terms a “techno-economical structure” analogous to that of the grain growers. As a consequence their societies are analogous as well. He proposes to substitute the classic opposition of hunter – gatherers and agriculturalists with a more general classification, depending on whether or not their economies rely on the large scale stockpiling of a seasonal, basic food resources. The evolutionary implications of this recasting are very clear. In no case it is possible to retain a unilinear conception. Rather, one finds an evolution which diverges, resulting, in one case, in food-storing hunter-gatherers, who remain unchanged into the 19th century and, in the other case, in agriculturalists, some of whom came to develop into very different forms of society.

The sexual division of labor as ideology

In a second work Alain Testart traces some invariance that one could almost term as transhistorical, as they are widely found in very different societies, including those of the first industrial era. One of these is how work is divided between men and women. A brief observation shows for instance that women are generally kept far from all professions related to blood (surgery, the armed professions, hunting, etc.). A consideration of the ethnographic data collected on hunter–gatherers shows that the division of tasks between men and women regarding gathering and hunting obeys a simple law: women are not excluded from hunting but from those forms of hunting that shed blood. With the

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territorie ...

, the Siberians and the Australian Aboriginals women can be observed hunting with nets and clubs, but never with bows and arrows or with harpoons. These data refute the idea that the sexual division of labor with hunter–gatherers could be based on nature (women not hunting because of repetitive pregnancies) and had no connection to economical rationality, because what could justify women hunting but not using typical hunting weapons? In his ''Essay on the Foundations of the Sexual Division of Labor with the Hunter-Gatherers'' (1986) Alain Testart argues that this division must be based on an ideology involving the symbolism of blood. Finally relating these prohibitions or

taboo A taboo or tabu is a social group's ban, prohibition, or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, sacred, or allowed only for certain persons.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

s regarding weapons to the very numerous taboos associated with the blood of menstruation, he shows how this ideology acts to prevent the blood shed by women from being confused or mixed up with the blood shed by men in the hunt.

Concepts of Comparative Sociology

Alain Testart was often very critical about social anthropology; he reproached it for using concepts that are vague, inexact and much too simple, compared to the concepts used in the sciences of history or in the history of law. He maintains that for a scientific project in a comprehensive sociology it is of fundamental importance to consider small, precolonial stateless societies, that so far have been studied only by this discipline. According to Alain Testart, today’s major scientific challenge when studying these societies is to be able to use the same terms and the same problematic as those used by the historical sciences. In this perspective he has reexamined a number of issues in order to define the terms with more precision.

Slavery

For instance: slavery, conceived as an extreme form of servile dependency, needs to be carefully distinguished from other forms like

serfdom Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which develop ...

, the Roman colonat,

helot The helots (; el, εἵλωτες, ''heílotes'') were a subjugated population that constituted a majority of the population of Laconia and Messenia – the territories ruled by Sparta. There has been controversy since antiquity as to their ...

ism, etc. In ''Slaves, Debt and Power: Studies in comparative Sociology'' Alain Testart notices that the slave is not assigned a single typical way of life. This is particularly true for the slave of Antiquity: the slave of the latifundia and the slave who works at his master’s side have very little in common; the gladiator and the Prince’s favorite, who carries out important functions in the imperial offices, have even less in common. There is no single material and social condition characteristic of slavery. These slaves have in common only their legal status as slaves: to consider only the Greek and Roman examples, the favorite concubine of the master and the worker in the mines of the Laurion cannot have legitimate children. And, according to laws common to both

classical Athens The city of Athens ( grc, Ἀθῆναι, ''Athênai'' .tʰɛ̂ː.nai̯ Modern Greek: Αθήναι, ''Athine'' or, more commonly and in singular, Αθήνα, ''Athina'' .'θi.na during the classical period of ancient Greece (480–323 BC) wa ...

and

ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom ...

, both the concubine and the miner are subject to torture when they are called to testify in a law court. The slave cannot be conceived of except as a clear legal category. But the legal conditions of slavery, for instance in Ancient Rome and with the Ashanti, are not at all the same. They even completely change from the beginning to the end of the Roman empire, likewise they differ between the Ashanti kingdom and that of

Abomey Abomey is the capital of the Zou Department of Benin. The commune of Abomey covers an area of 142 square kilometres and, as of 2012, had a population of 90,195 people. Abomey houses the Royal Palaces of Abomey, a collection of small traditional ...

. This legal dimension needs to be enlarged to encompass a wider sociological characterization. Alain Testart sees exclusion as one of the most important characteristics of the slave, he cites the work of Africanists who have shown that the slave in pre-colonial Africa was considered as a man “without kin”, as someone without a name and without descendants. The slave in Antiquity was excluded from the city state, namely from the rights associated with citizen status. According to Islamic law the slave could only be slave when he was an outsider to the community of the faithful at the time he was enslaved. In many old Asian kingdoms the slave had no connection to the king, did not pay taxes and was not obliged to serve in the military. Alain Testart summarizes these facts by saying that everywhere the slave was defined by an exclusion from areas considered as most fundamental by society. The nature of this exclusion could vary; in one society there is exclusion from parenthood, in another from the city state; in a third one from any contact with the Prince. This sociological characterization adequately distinguishes slavery from other forms of dependence.

The gift

He uses the same approach to propose a new definition of the

. The difference between a gift and an exchange does not depend on a gift being returned: the regular exchange of presents is well known. Nor does the distinction depend on whether the reciprocity is expected: gift-giving with selfish motives also exists, giving something in the hope of getting back more in return (for example: the '' baksheesh''). The radical difference between a gift and an exchange is that the gift-giver cannot legitimately claim a counter gift (even when he expects a gift in return, or when this hope is his most important motive), whereas the person who exchanges always has the right to demand compensation. The difference does not depend on the form of payment or on the motives of the actors. Here too it is the juridical aspect that enables us to distinguish both phenomena: the right to demand compensation characterizes the exchange but is absent with the gift. On this basis one can show that the '' kula'' with the

Trobriand The Trobriand Islands are a archipelago of coral atolls off the east coast of New Guinea. They are part of the nation of Papua New Guinea and are in Milne Bay Province. Most of the population of 12,000 indigenous inhabitants live on the main isl ...

is not a gift but an exchange: one can compel compensation, by force if necessary. This is clearly not the case with the ''

potlatch A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States,Harkin, Michael E., 2001, Potlatch in Anthropology, International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Scie ...

'' of the American Indians of the Pacific coast, which has to be characterized as a series of gifts and counter gifts. These new theses, that are exposed in their main lines in ''A Critique of the Gift: Studies on non profit circulation'' lead to a reevaluation of the famous theories of Mauss, in particular of his idea of an “obligation to give in return”. Alain Testart reproaches Mauss for not specifying whether the nature of obligation is juridical or only moral and, by consequence, thus obscuring the nature and importance of the gift in history and in society. These theses are currently being widely discussed and debated.

The Evolution of Societies

From his earliest writings, Alain Testart confirms himself very explicitly as an evolutionist. This is particularly true in the article ''The Question of Evolutionism in Social Anthropology'' from 1992. In this article he welcomes the often unappreciated originality of the great 19th Century anthropologists, primarily that of

, but simultaneously criticizes their methods. Comparative anthropology or solely the observation of “pre-current” and current societies is in no case adequate for reconstructing the evolution of past societies and cultures. He underlines that this reconstruction has to rest on historical documents or on those of prehistoric archeology. For this reason he considers collaboration, as well as debate, with archeologists, whether prehistorians or protohistorians, to be extremely important. This conviction led him to take a dual perspective on the funeral practices from both an archeological and an ethnological viewpoint, and to introduce a thesis on the origin of the State. Here he focuses on what he terms as “the accompanying dead”, referring to one or more men who must die in order to accompany the deceased. In ''Voluntary Servitude'' (2004, 2 parts) 2004 : La servitude volontaire (2 vols.) : I, Les morts d’accompagnement ; II, L’origine de l’État. Paris : Errance, 264 p. et 140 p. oluntary Servitude (2 Vol.): Part I, The “Accompanying Dead” ; Part II, The Origins of the State English Summary : http://www.alain.testart.com/UK/documents/engservitude.html . he examined all ethnographic and historical reports of this practice. It appears to have been extremely widespread in the past, not only in kingdoms, as is often thought, but in the societies based on

lineage Lineage may refer to: Science * Lineage (anthropology), a group that can demonstrate its common descent from an apical ancestor or a direct line of descent from an ancestor * Lineage (evolution), a temporal sequence of individuals, populat ...

(in Africa) or in acephalous societies, like those of the American Indians of the Pacific coast. Slaves who have played the role of faithful servants to their masters are often implicated. It is the idea of fidelity that the master wants to take with him to his grave. Alain Testart points out that in ethnology one finds this practice in stateless societies, and in archeology in Neolithic societies, all of which indicates that it existed in non-State societies. It can also be found in certain forms of the archaic State. These data all indicate that the germs of a State power – and of despotic power – are present well in advance of the State. A powerful person derives his power from dependents, who depend on him to such a degree that they know they will not survive him. They are his faithful servants, and the ethnographic data show quite clearly that his power rests more on such servants than on kin. Family members having a dual liability because of having rights analogous to those of the pretender, which make them his potential rivals. The historical and ethno-historical data reveal numerous kingdoms, especially in Africa and in the Islamic world, where kings rely on “the slaves of the crown”; they even possess whole armies of slave regiments. How can we not see a continuity here? The “exceptional loyalty of the slaves”, as an Arab saying goes, provides a secure base for a power that wants to assert itself and, as Alain Testart maintains, to a power that want to assert itself in the form of a state.

Main publications (French)

* 197
Des classifications dualistes en Australie : Essai sur l'évolution de l'organisation sociale
Paris et Lille : Maison des Sciences de l'Homme & Lille III, 222 p. * 198

Paris : Société d'Ethnographie (Université Paris X-Nanterre), 254 p. * 198

Paris : Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 549 p. * 198
Préface à L. H. Morgan : La société archaïque
Paris : Anthropos. * 198

Paris : EHESS (Cahiers de l'Homme), 102 p. * 199

Paris : Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 441 p. * 199

Paris : Christian Bourgois, 174 p. * 199

Paris : Société d'Ethnologie (Université Paris-X-Nanterre), 290 p. * 199
La question de l'évolutionnisme dans l'anthropologie sociale
Revue Française de Sociologie 33 : 155-187. * 199

Paris : Ed. du CNRS, 392 p. * 200

Paris : Errance, 238 p. * 2001 Moyen d'échange/moyen de paiement : Des monnaies en général et plus particulièrement des primitives. In Testart, A. (éd.) 200

Paris : Errance (pp. 11–60). * 200
Propriété et non propriété de la terre : L'illusion de la propriété collective (1ère partie)
Etudes Rurales 165-166 : 209-242. * 200
Propriété et non propriété de la terre : La confusion entre souveraineté politique et propriété foncière (2ème partie)
Etudes Rurales 169-170 : 149-178. * 200

(2 vols.) : I, Les morts d’accompagnement ; II, L’origine de l’État. Paris : Errance, 264 p. et 140 p. * 200

Paris : Errance, 160 p. * 2006 (2e édition, révisée

Paris : Errance, 160 p.
Introduction et chapitre 1
. * 200
Comment concevoir une collaboration entre anthropologie sociale et archéologie ? à quel prix ? et pourquoi ?
Bulletin de la Société préhistorique de France 103(2) : 385-395. * 2006 Interprétation symbolique et interprétation religieuse en archéologie : L’example du taureau à Çatal Höyük. Paléorient 32(2) : 23-57. * 200

Paris : Syllepse, 268 p. (Chap. 1
What is a gift ?
and chap. 4
Uncertainties of the ‛obligation to reciprocate’: A critique of Mauss
. * 2007 Clientèle, clientélisme, évergétisme et liturgies. In Lécrivain, V. (éd.) Clientèle guerrière, clientèle foncière et clientèle électorale : Histoire et anthropologie. Dijon : Éds. universitaires de Dijon. * 201

Arles, Actes Sud, 304 p.
extraits du premier chapitre
. * 201
Les modèles biologiques sont-ils utiles pour penser l’évolution des sociétés?
Préhistoires Méditerranéennes 2 : 1-18. * 201

Gallimard.

e

. * 201

(sous la direction d'Alain Testart). Paris, Errance
Table des matières
e
chapitre 1
. * 201

Paris, Gallimard, 192 p.

Some papers available in English

200
Slave that are not slaves, yet really are
Extended Summary in English of: 200

Paris : Errance, 238 p. 200
The Extent and Significance of Debt Slavery
Revue Française de Sociologie n°spécial 43 : 173-204. Translation of : 2000 : ''Importance et signification de l’esclavage pour dettes''. Revue Française de Sociologie 41 : 609-641. 201
Slavery, 6000 years ago
Translation of : 2010 (in collaboration with Ch. Jeunesse, L. Baray et B. Boulestin) : ''« Les esclaves des tombes néolithiques »''. Pour la Science 396 : 74-80 201
Reconstructing Social and Cultural Evolution: The Case of Dowry in the Indo-European Area
Current Anthropology vol.54, n°1, February 2013. 201
What is a gift?
an
Uncertainties of the ‛obligation to reciprocate’: A critique of Mauss
translation of chap.1 and chap.4 of : 2007 ''Critique du don : Études sur la circulation non marchande''. Paris : Syllepse, 268 p. (Critique of the Gift : Studies on non profit circulation).

Footnotes

External links

Resources

official web site

Laboratory of Ethnology and comparative Sociology

AusAnthrop Website
Anthropological research and documentation about the Australian Aboriginals , Recherche et documentation anthropologique sur les Aborigènes d'Australie.

Book Reviews

* Gilles Holder

L’Homme, 167-168 , juillet-décembre 2003. Online since September 11, 2008. * Gérard Chouquer

Paris, Errance, 2005, 160 p., Études rurales, 178 - Quel développement à Madagascar ? (2006). * Gérald Gaillard-Starzmann

L’Homme, 177-178 , janvier-juin 2006. Online since April 12, 2006. * Jean-François Dortier

(2012), Sciences Humaines, Nº. 245, February 2013. (Last updated December 23, 2013).