Collection LQC - Le Quellec, Jean-Loïc

Le Quellec, Jean-Loïc LQC

Le Quellec, Jean-Loïc

Collection

Collection of artifacts

Background of the Recorder:Jean-Loïc Le Quellec was born in 1951. He has a degree in Quaternary Palaeoecology from the École pratique des hautes études, and a Doctorate in Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. He has authored 275 articles and around twenty books, including Symbolisme et art rupestre au Sahara central (L'Harmattan, 1993), ABCdaire des déserts (Flammarion, 1997), Rock Art in Africa: Mythology and Legend (Flammarion, 2004), Du Sahara au Nil: peinture et gravures d'avant les pharaons (Soleb / Fayard / Collège de France 2005), and Des Martiens au Sahara. Chroniques d'archéologie romantique (Errance, 2009). He received the Bordin Prize from the Institute de France in 2006 and the major Burkhart Archaeology Prize in 2008. Senior Researcher with the CNRS since 2005, he is on secondment at the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS, UMIFRE 25, Johannesburg) since 2007. Jean-Loïc is the editor of the scientific journal Les cahiers de l'AARS, published by the association Les Amis de l'Art Rupestre Saharien chaired by him.
He first conducted ethnographic surveys in France, i.e. Vendée (since 1972), Loire-Atlantique (1976), Maine-et-Loire and Mayenne (1976-1978), on traditional music, popular worship, tales and legends in particular. At the same time he published many works on the Prehistory of Western France.
Jean-Loïc was a resident in Libya from 1976 to 1980 where he learned Arabic. There he conducted dialectological surveys (on Fezzanese dialects) as well as ethnographic surveys (on Qçûr legend and popular medication among others) in Fezzân and the Tripolitania area. From 1976 to 1983, he also conducted ethno-musicological surveys on the popular violin and accordion traditions of the Rimouski area in Quebec. In 1993, his ethnographic works concerned the 'serpari' (snake charmers) fête of San Domenico de Cocullo in the Abruzzes (Italy), as well as urban and contemporary legends.
It was in Libya that Jean-Loïc discovered Saharan rock art, on the Messak Plateau in particular - a vast rocky stretch of the Libyan Sahara which, on the maps, corresponds to a huge 'white area'. During the last century, the few explorers who crossed this area on their way to Timbuktu, pointed out the presence of 'written stones'. Later, the rare prehistorians and travellers who went through the legendary country of the Garamantes, also described the splendours they saw there. From 1978 onwards, Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, as a young anthropologist, decided in his own mind to be clear about it. Crossing deep valleys - which can only be crossed on foot - and under temperatures exceeding sometimes 50°C in the shade, he patiently sketched an amazing testimony of Neolithic daily life. Lions, elephants, buffaloes, hippopotamuses and crocodiles mix with pastoral scenes, while figures dressed in finely decorated robes follow saddled and adorned oxen, pacing not too far from peacefully grazing sheep. In other places, men wearing animal masks illustrate the rituals of a pastoral population among whom hunting had an important place. Further on, disturbing giants with wild dog heads, looking monstrous and unreal, armed with axes or daggers, welcome travellers with a strange snarl. After gathering a corpus of more than 10 000 rock-based documents, Jean-Loïc Le Quellec was able to patiently piece together engravers' lifestyle, and to rediscover part of their mythology. This unique set in the subcontinent made it possible to shed new light on African Prehistory.
This experience then led to an opening towards other rock traditions, essentially African, and Jean-Loïc multiplied his field trips to Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Mauritania, Morocco, Ethiopia and Arabia. From 2003, he extended his rock art research to include Southern Africa (South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho and Botswana). As such, his wide vision of rock art from North Africa enabled him to specify the chronological situation of several image styles which, up until then, could not be dated or were the subject of the most contradictory speculations.
From 2000 to 2005, he conducted a vast project of preventive archaeology on the Messak area (Libya), under the aegis of the Department of Antiquities of Tripoli. This entailed the general conception and implementation of the project with the recruitment of around fifty French and Libyan archaeologists, the management of the global agenda and the relationships with sponsors, the setup of a GIS and building of a database making the standardised recording of results possible, with a view to creating a regional archaeological map.
Since 2008, Jean-Loïc has been heading, on the French side, the French-Algerian project for the analysis and dating of Tassili, Ahaggar and Atlas rock art, with a view to placing the rock images found in these regions in an absolute chronology.

Collection obtained from: Le Quellec, Jean-Loïc

Collection owner image: LQC.jpg

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