Rencontre autour de nos aïeux

Rencontre autour de nos aïeux – La mort de plus en plus proche (our ancestors)

From Wednesday 25 May to Friday 27 May 2016
Faculté de médecine de La Timone - Marseille

Six years after the Rencontre autour du cadavre (the corpse), the annual meeting of the Gaaf is back in Marseille, from may 25 to 27 2016, dealing with contemporary death and deads.

How is the archaeological study of recent deaths particular? In Marseille, archaeologists have just searched a cemetery of contemporary times; elsewhere in France and Europe, teams are called to work on recent sites such as the trenches of the First World War. However, the study of this chronological field is still marginal and for some useless, even disturbing, even though history or sociology have largely nourished it for decades.

Temporal closeness interrogates disciplines differently and if it raises ethical questions, it allows a rich approach of teachings that renews problems and methodologies, delivering new materials to research on death in the humanities and social sciences. The interest of this Rencontre will therefore be to highlight the heuristic potential of this research, by pointing out their contributions, their interest and the societal questions they raise. Different sources and objects will be confronted and put into perspective: soil archives, written and figurated archives, historical and cultural (even cultual) settings, not to mention law, ethical considerations, psychoanalysis…

How do reaserchers and the public confronted with these questions feel the scale of time, the close and the distant, when these discoveries refer to notions of identity, filiation, social belonging, religious, known or supposed? Although the search of a medieval or even modern cemetery no longer raises questions of legitimacy in France, the same does not always apply to the search of a more recent burial site. What about other cultural contexts of the Mediterranean and more broadly European area?

The organisers of the Rencontre, like the one around the corpse, wished an international and multidisciplinary meeting, combining archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, ethicists, jurists, doctors, professionals of funeral homes, psychoanalysts (…), in order to allow a real confrontation of ideas and practices. It will feed into reflections on a more comprehensive and inclusive approach to death and the relationship to it, here and elsewhere.

Organizing committee Yann ArdagnaLaetitia DelouisPatrice GeorgesHervé GuyLaetitia LantériValéry RavixAnne RichierCatherine RigeadeIsabelle SchwindenhammerIngrid SénépartStefan TzortzisNicolas Weydert

Scientific committee Yann ArdagnaPascal AdalianBruno BertheratRégis BertrandBruno BizotJean BoutierColette CastrucciJocelyne CayronPatrice GeorgesJean-Pierre GasnierHervé GuyLaetitia LantériPierre Le CozMarie-Pascale MalleMarika MoisseeffGeneviève PerreardEmilie PortatAnnick RianniAnne RichierCatherine RigeadeAurore SchmittIngrid SenepartMichel SignoliStefan TzortzisNicolas Weydert

Scientific and financial partners : Ministère de la Culture et de la CommunicationInrapAix-Marseille UniversitéADES (UMR 7268)Centre Norbert Elias (UMR 8562)CNRSVille de Marseille

Number of participants : 150

Photo gallery of the meeting

Publication

The proceedings of this Meeting were published in 2019.

Know more about the publication