Annette Laming-Emperaire

Who was Annette Laming-Emperaire?

Annette Laming-Emperaire was a French archeologist.

Born in Petrograd, Annette Laming studied philosophy in Paris until World War II began. She then turned to teaching while participating in the French Resistance. After the war, she studied archeology and specialized in cave art; her doctoral thesis, done under the supervision of André Leroi-Gourhan, La Signification de l’art rupestre paléolithique,

dismissed the various, too creative theories of its predecessors, and, with them, any residual nineteenth-century prejudice or romance about the "primitive" mind. Laming-Emperaire's structuralist methodology is still in use, much facilitated by computer science. It involves compiling minutely detailed inventories and diagrams of the way that species are grouped on the cave walls; of their gender, frequency, and position; and of their relation to the signs and handprints that often appear close to them.