Paul Sanlaville (photo Claire Boisson).
Paul Sanlaville, Jacques Besançon, Lorraine Copeland and Francis Hours, the “bande des 4”, in front of the excavation house of the Ras Shamra mission (Syria), during the survey in the Nahr el-Kebir valley in 1976 (photo Sultan Muhesen).
1It is with intense emotion and deep sadness that we learned of the death of Paul Sanlaville on Thursday 4th March 2021.
2A geographer and geomorphologist, he was one of the foremost experts on the Near East and the Arabian Gulf, which he had surveyed for so long and enjoyed so much. To this day, his book entitled Le Moyen-Orient arabe. Le milieu et l’homme (2000) remains the geographical reference work for all those interested in this region.
3Born in 1933 in Izieux, now a district of Saint-Chamond, he studied history and geography at the University of Lyon. As part of his postgraduate studies, his first foreign project was in Algeria, where he spent six months in 1955-1956 with Marc Côte in the Hoggar, studying the physical and human geography of this hostile mountainous region.
- 1 The “agrégation” is a competitive examination for civil service in the French public education syst (...)
4Awarded the “agrégation”1 in geography in 1958, he went on to hold a teaching position at Aumale high school for boys in Constantine (Algeria, 1958-1960) where he met Denise, who was to become his wife. In 1960, they moved to Beirut, where he worked on his State doctoral thesis and, until 1968, taught at the Institut de Géographie du Proche et du Moyen-Orient, of which he was scientific secretary and then assistant director.
5He worked there with Father Henri Fleisch S. J., a specialist in oriental languages, prehistorian and great connoisseur of the marine Quaternary of Lebanon, who introduced him to this discipline. He also met Francis Hours S. J., also a prehistorian. The collaboration between the latter and Paul Sanlaville on a study of the Lebanese coastal Quaternary gave rise to a long friendship which was to continue in Lyon when both met at the Maison de l’Orient. Their research led them first to Borj Qinnarit, south of Saïda, where, in the company of Rémi Dalongeville, they collected artefacts from an old beach perched at an altitude of nearly 120 m, and then to Syria, in the valley of the northern Nahr el-Kébir, where they discovered a very old alluvial terrace at Sitt Markho, containing the oldest lithic industry known in Syria. From this came the idea of creating, in 1976, a research team based not only on multidisciplinarity but also on interdisciplinarity, in order to bring researchers to work together, to share their knowledge rather than to add them. This was to be RCP 438, “Quaternaire et préhistoire du Proche-Orient”, in which Lorraine Copeland, Jacques Besançon, Sultan Muhesen, and then Olivier Aurenche were involved. This fine team surveyed the Syrian terrain, from the sea to the desert, before devoting itself for several years to Jordan, inaugurating a very fruitful association between prehistorians and geomorphologists. They renewed the approach to this science by implementing a multidisciplinary approach that was still very rare at the time and much more often evoked than actually practised. This collaboration gave rise to the Atlas des sites du Proche-Orient, better known as ASPRO (1994), on which Marie-Claire and Jacques Cauvin also collaborated, and with whom Paul organised and published two international colloquia on the prehistory of the Levant (1980 and 1988).
6After returning to France in 1969, Paul joined the CNRS as a researcher and defended his thesis in 1973, Étude géomorphologique de la région littorale du Liban, a work which is still an authority today and which established him as a specialist in Mediterranean coastal areas and, more broadly, in the Quaternary of the Middle East. Mediterranean research on the marine Quaternary was and still is a privileged observatory of world research on this subject.
7In 1979, he succeeded Jean Pouilloux at the head of what was then the Maison de l’Orient méditerranéen. He managed the institution until 1987, with skill and competence. It was to him that the delicate task of organising this institution, which was then opening up to multidisciplinarity, fell. Thanks to his qualities as a researcher and organiser, this challenge was successfully met. The foundations he put in place are those that still govern this Maison today, despite restructurings, changes of name and “passing fashions”.
8It was then that he created, within the MOM, the URA 913-GREMO, entitled “De la mer au désert, gestion de l’espace et organisation des sociétés”, which took over from RCP 438 and which brought together geographers, prehistorians, ethnologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and sociologists, for all of whom Syria was their preferred field of study.
9At the Lumière-Lyon 2 University, where he taught for many years, he was Vice-President for Research (1982-1984). An excellent teacher, he was able to make many students understand and appreciate his discipline and his conception of research.
10Director of research at the CNRS, he chaired the newly created section 31 of the Comité national de la recherche scientifique, which included geographers, anthropologists and prehistorians (1991-1995). For many years, he was a member of the various committees of Paléorient.
11A tireless and inquisitive researcher, he has worked not only in Lebanon and Syria, his favourite areas, but also in several countries of the Near and Middle East: in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Sudan, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Pakistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Malta, etc., focusing on fields as diverse as the evolution of the Levantine coastline, the quest for water in arid areas, human occupation in the Palaeolithic period, etc.
12Always attentive to the evolution of research and themes, he subsequently became very interested in the climatic changes that had affected the region during the Upper Pleistocene and the Holocene, notably by writing a number of syntheses that still remain reference works in this constantly changing field.
13A researcher with a clear and methodical mind, and a great teacher, Paul has left us a beautiful heritage, combining humanism, convictions, human and intellectual qualities and sensitivity as well as uprightness. His training in physical geography (coastal geomorphology) did not prevent him from taking an interest in mankind, human societies and their development from a diachronic perspective which has always been favoured by geographers and which he practised with happiness.
14He has left his mark on a whole generation of Orientalists, members of the Maison de l’Orient, whether they were researchers, teaching researchers, engineers, technicians or students. His charisma, his open-mindedness, his pleasant and friendly character, his scientific rigour made him a model for many of us, if not a mentor. He had the art of putting people at ease, of valuing them in difficult moments, of supporting them. Many of us have benefited from his teachings, his wise counsel, his wisdom.
15In his own way, Paul was a “revolutionary”: he understood well before others the importance of a real interdisciplinary approach, by connecting together geographers, anthropologists, prehistorians, archaeologists, sociologists... His ambition was to study, in the long term, societies and their relations with the spaces where they developed.
16We shall miss this great and familiar figure and we join his family in their grief.