Ceramics and Society (PDF)

Valentine Roux is Director of Research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, France). Her work combines ethnoarchaeology in India and archaeology in the Near East with the aim of highlighting the anthropological regularities underlying the evolutionary trajectories of ancient technological traditions. Much of her research has been devoted to the development of reference frameworks, whether about the diagnostic attributes of manufacturing techniques, their properties, the quantification of their constitutive components, the cognitive and motor skills involved, or, more recently, about the conditions favorable to their diffusion. These frames of reference were built during two stages: a first stage where regularities were highlighted, a second stage where the mechanisms that found them were studied. During this second stage, there is always a change of scale and need for interdisciplinary research which explains her numerous collaborations with researchers in geosciences, economy, psychology and sociology. At the same time, the application of anthropological regularities to the archaeological assemblages of the ancient Near East has necessitated the development of new theoretical and methodological frameworks that led her to renew, more particularly, the ceramic technological approach. She was rewarded in 2015 with the CNRS silver medal and in 2016 with the Legion d'Honneur under the Ministry of Scientific Research.