Alain Testart

Who is Alain Testart?

Alain Testart was a French social anthropologist who specialised in primitives societies, comparative sociology and the evolution of societies. Specially in this 1992's article The question of evolution in social anthropology, although he recognizes the originality of nineteenth-century evolutionists, mainly Lewis H. Morgan, he criticizes their method. In fact in the comparative anthropology, the alone observation of presents peoples is not enough in itself to reconstruct the past of the evolution of societies and cultures. The study of the evolution of societies must, in addition, be supported by historicales archives or prehistoric archeology. Testart died in September 2013 in Paris following a lengthy illness. He was 67 years old. His next book, L'amazone et la cuisinière. Anthropologie de la division sexuelle du travail, will be available in January 2014.