The facsimile edition of “Lʼedat de la pedra” by Pere Bosch Gimpera commemorates the centenary of prehistoric archaeological studies in Catalonia

Book presentation.
Book presentation.
Academic
(29/09/2016)

The publishing house of the University of Barcelona publishes the facsimile —with a prologue by Francisco Garcia Alonso and Josep M. Fullola Pericot— of the work by Bosch Gimpera which set the bases for the Catalan School of Archaeology one hundred years ago. Lʼedat de pedra renewed the content and methodology of the studies on prehistory which had been taught in Spanish universities up to that moment. The book was presented on October 3, at 12h, in the Aula Magna of the Historical Building of the University of Barcelona.

Book presentation.
Book presentation.
Academic
29/09/2016

The publishing house of the University of Barcelona publishes the facsimile —with a prologue by Francisco Garcia Alonso and Josep M. Fullola Pericot— of the work by Bosch Gimpera which set the bases for the Catalan School of Archaeology one hundred years ago. Lʼedat de pedra renewed the content and methodology of the studies on prehistory which had been taught in Spanish universities up to that moment. The book was presented on October 3, at 12h, in the Aula Magna of the Historical Building of the University of Barcelona.

The event has counted with the attendance of the Rector, Dídac Ramírez, the Vice-Rector of Institutional Relations and Culture, Lourdes Cirlot, and professors of Prehistory Narcís Soler Masferrer (University of Girona), Francesc Garcia Alonso and Josep M. Fullola Pericot (University of Barcelona).

Lʼedat de pedra was published in 1916 as part of the Minerva collection, an initiative by the Pedagogy Council of Diputació de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council) to give the public general knowledge on several topics told by experts. Those forty pages aimed to introduce modern approaches in the analyses of prehistory in Catalonia, a moment in which, Professor Martiniano Martínez Ramírez —who taught Universal History at the University of Barcelona— still criticized Darwinist theories about the origins of humans. The text by Bosch Gimpera was based on the ideas of the Scandinavian School of Archaeology, built in the early 19th century, when -after the reorganization of new nations resulting from the agreements in the Congress of Vienna- European countries looked for their legitimacy and political and ideological training of people in a new explanation and interpretation of national history. In this theoretical line, Bosch gave importance to the works by Christian Thomsen, Jens Worsaae and Oscar Montelius about the systemizations of the Iron Age in Central Europe and Northern Italy. He also valued the studies by John Lubbock in the United Kingdom and Édouard Lartet, Marcel de Serres and Jackques Boucher de Perthes in France. Bosch showed the treatment he did over his professional life in proto-history, adding the archaeological results with data taken from written sources of classic periods, an initiative within the growing interest in classicism developed in Catalonia in early 20th century with scientific and ideological reasons, related to Noucentisme. This scientific-ideological dual motivation enabled the crystallization of essential companies for the Catalan archaeology, such as the excavations in Empúries, which started in 1908 at the request of Prat de la Riba.

Lʼedat de la pedra was the second most important work by the author, further than articles published in the artistic journal La Veu de Catalunya. The first one was his doctoral thesis in History, read in 1913, El problema de la ceramica ibérica, which enabled him to be accepted in European academic circles. From that moment on, the written work by Bosch Gimpera continued growing, until getting the most of it with Etnología de la Península Ibérica (1932), where he presented an exhaustive synthesis of the peninsular prehistory. The influence of Bosch Gimpera in the academic and scientific fields continued growing not only in Spain but also in Europe and this leading role didnʼt stop with the exile. With education in the National Autonomous University in Mexico and in UNESCO in Paris, he continued influencing in the development of the studies on prehistory at a global scale until his death in 1974.

The origins of the Catalan Archaeological School were a group dedicated to research and education led by Bosch Gimpera and formed by Lluís Pericot, Alberto del Castillo, Salvador Roca i Lletjós, the brothers Josep de Calasanç and Elías Serra Ràfols, and Francesc Esteve Gálvez. Other students joined the group: Josep M. Batista i Roca, focused on anthropology and ethnography, and some years later Joan Maluquer de Motes, Mercè Montañola Garriga and Salvador Espriu; also, in the Service of Archaeological Research depending on the Historical-Archaeological Section of The Institute for Catalan Studies, created in 1915, Josep Colominas, Agustí Duran i Sanpere, and Adela Ramón i Lligué. All of them created a dynamic group that greatly defined prehistory archaeology -even classical- in Spain until the end of the Civil War.

Pere Bosch Gimpera (Barcelona, 1891- Mexico, 1974) taught Catalan university studies and was Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at the University of Barcelona. He studied in Germany and was instructor for scientific studies on prehistory in Spain and founder of the Catalan School of Archaeology, the focus of the most important prehistory archaeological research in Spain prior to the war, apart from a point of reference in the creation and systematization of prehistory in Europe. Bosch was also rector of the University of Barcelona during the Republic and Civil War, and minister of Justice during the presidency of Lluís Companys. He exiled in Toulouse and Oxford, where he tried to establish with no luck due the pressure of Franco regime civil guards. Once he had installed in Mexico, in 1942 he entered the National Autonomous University of Mexico as lecturer, and left temporarily in 1948 when he was appointed director of the Human and Social Sciences Division of the UNESCO, in Paris, which enabled him coming back to international research. From that moment on the Francoist regime was obligated to accept him but he didnʼt come back to Catalonia. He wrote, among other books, Prehistòria catalana (1919) and El problema indoeuropeo (1960).

Regarding the figure of Pere Bosch Gimpera, the publishing house of the University of Barcelona has also published the books Pensar la Universitat. Escrits de Pere Bosch Gimpera a Lluís Pericot (1919-1974), by Josep M. Fullola Pericot, Francisco Garcia Alonso and Francesc Vilanova.