François Bordes and the Old Stone Age

Abstract

This is a highly personal description of the character and work of the great French archaeologist Francois Bordes, with whom Sackett worked for over twenty years. A native of France’s Perigord region, the prehistory of which he explored for most of his career, Bordes regarded himself as a ‘journeyman field worker’ or ‘homme de terrain’. However his contributions to Palaeolithic archaeology had an impact on the whole of the prehistory of Eurasia and beyond. This was the result of his innovative approaches to excavation and to the analysis of stone tool assemblages. Bordes participated in, and enjoyed debating the controversies between archaeological method and theory – and unfortunately, he also promoted factionalism within the French archaeological community.