[Bonetools] Francois Poplin

Wed Apr 24 11:40:47 CEST 2024

Dear all

Here is the text of the official announcement from our laboratory, of which
F. Poplin was still a member.
You will find the French version with illustrations at the following link
https://archeozoo-archeobota.mnhn.fr/fr/actualites/francois-poplin-9200

François Poplin was an encyclopedic researcher, a teacher and an atypical
colleague, who knew no intellectual boundaries and was bubbling with ideas.
Even if it was sometimes difficult to follow the lineaments of his thought,
he was and remains a great inspiration of ideas. A man of character, a hard
worker, generous in everything he did, he demonstrated boundless enthusiasm
and acuity right up to his final hours. In this, he remains a role model
for many, at the Museum and perhaps even more so elsewhere, in France and
beyond. He played a major role in our community by promoting, often ahead
of his time, a global naturalistic and anthropological approach to
human-animal relations, in all their historical dimensions, and by striving
towards a universal perception of the anthropological fact. Retired since
December 2008, he remained honorary director of the UMR "Archéozoologie,
Archéobotanique" and honorary attaché to the “Muséum national d'Histoire
naturelle” (MNHN).

He left us on April 20, 2024 (the anniversary of the Fontainebleau
farewells in 1814, as he might have said with humour!)

François Poplin was born in Auxerre, Yonne, in 1943. Burgundy is a strong
component of his identity. The son of a history teacher, F. Poplin
discovered archaeology in 1955, then in 1958 at the Ecolives and
Arcy-sur-Cure excavations, both directed by André Leroi-Gourhan. He learned
a lot from the this eminent anthropologist, and later sought to follow this
model of field experience and collective thinking, where generations
mingled, in the excavations at La Roche-aux-Loups (Merry-sur-Yonne), which
he directed during the 1980s.

Despite his interest in archaeology, F. Poplin studied veterinary medicine
in Lyon under the great anatomist Professor Robert Barone. In 1966, he
defended his doctoral thesis entitled « Research on eyeball biometry in
domestic mammals ». A veterinary surgeon in the Berry region, he continued
his studies, defending a doctoral thesis in 1972 entitled « Contribution to
the morphology and biometry of *Alopex lagopus* (Linnaeus) and *Vulpes
vulpes* (Linnaeus). The foxes of Arcy-sur-Cure».

Hired the same year as an assistant at the “Laboratoire d'Anatomie
Comparée” at the MNHN, he was one of the few to have taken interest in
osteological collections, which had fallen into disuse over the past fifty
years. Over the next decade, he listed, reassembled and identified these
abandoned skeletons, in parallel with the analysis of animal bones from
numerous Paleolithic and Neolithic sites in Germany and France. In so
doing, he made a significant contribution to establishing a palethnographic
vision of osteoarchaeology, archaeozoology and taphonomy, which he passed
on to many generations of students and collaborators, and which still
inspires the national community today. In 1976, he joined the still very
narrow circle of the international committee of the International Council
for Archaeozoology (ICAZ), where he shared the French representation with
Pierre Ducos. He felt that his title of Chairman of the Honorary Committee
of the 11th ICAZ congress, mainly organized by C. Lefèvre and J.-D. Vigne
in 2010 at the Jardin des Plantes and attended by over 800 participants,
was the best tribute that could be paid to him.

At the turn of the 1980s, with the support of a small group of young
researchers based at the Laboratoire d'Anatomie Comparée and often closely
associated with the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, where F. Poplin taught,
he founded "L'Homme et l'Animal" (HASRI), an association which publishes
the Journal *Anthropozoologica* (
https://sciencepress.mnhn.fr/en/periodiques/anthropozoologica) and
organizes numerous ebullient conferences, well attended by ethnozoologists
from the Muséum and members of the “Société d'Ethnozootechnie”. He was also
at the origin of the cooperative research program "Animal, Bone and
Archaeology" (RCP 717) supported by the CNRS, the embryo of what would
become in 1990, under his direction, the associated research unit of the
same name, today the UMR "Archaezoology, Archaeobotany", which has
contributed to the training and leadership of a significant part of the
French scientific community of bioarchaeologists, one of the largest in the
world.

Since the early 1980s, François Poplin's intellectual approach has focused
on anthropozoology, exploring the historical dynamics of the relationship
between man and animal, not only through bones, but also through
bestiaries, texts, languages... His immense culture and surprising
creativity enabled him to fertilize this then almost virgin field, which he
translated into a series of seminars on "The natural and cultural history
of real animals" at the MNHN from 1994 onwards.

F. Poplin is the author of hundreds of articles ranging from the
description of new taxa, to the analysis of Jules Renard's vision of
animals, to the provenance and stylistic analysis of hundreds of historical
ivory and bone objects, a field in which he is an international reference.
Most of the titles are published in non-indexed periodicals and written in
French, but in a remarkable style, where every word is weighed, considered
and chosen. From anatomy to paleontology and prehistory, François Poplin's
work extends to history, ethnology, anthropology, archaeozoology and
anthropozoology. He has traveled extensively to visit numerous collections
and museums, (re)identifying hard materials of animal or plant origin, and
explaining the techniques used to create objects. The Louvre Museum has
called on his expertise on numerous occasions, and his name should have
appeared as the principal author of the catalog for the 2004 exhibition on
ivories, from the ancient Orient to the modern era, as well as on many of
the labels of objects exhibited in various museums. This is just one of
many cases in which F. Poplin, too preoccupied with chasing a thousand
novelties and a thousand investigations that had been underway for years,
was more attached to intellectual challenges than to his own visibility or
career.

Nevertheless, he made sure that his work was well known and regularly
updated his bibliographic list. To ensure that this list is not overlooked
and that François Poplin's intellectual output continues to act as fertile
ground for younger generations, it can be consulted in full on the
following website:
https://archeozoo-archeobota.mnhn.fr/fr/annuaire/francois-poplin-8848.  The
same will soon apply to his Primer on Anthropozoology, interviews filmed in
2023 as part of the unit's archives.

J.-D. Vigne, C. Lefèvre, A. Averbouh, M. Mashkour, M.-P. Ruas

Archaeozoology, archaeobotany, CNRS-MNHN, Paris

Le mar. 23 avr. 2024 à 15:08, Zsuzsanna Toth <zsuzsanna.toth11 at gmail.com> a
écrit :

> A very-very sad news.
> Aline, please pass my condolences, too.
> I met him only a couple of times, but he was a great researcher caring for
> the young colleagues always open for discussion.
>
> Best
> Zsuzsa
>
> Dr. Tóth Zsuzsanna
> Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Régészeti Tár
> H-1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 14-16.
>
> Hungarian National Museum
> H-1088 Budapest, Múzeum Krt. 14-16.
>
>
> Alice Choyke <choyke at gmail.com> ezt írta (időpont: 2024. ápr. 22., H,
> 10:39):
>
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>    I just saw on the Zooarch mailing list that Francois Poplin has passed
>> away. He was an infinite fund of knowledge about all the ways bone could be
>> worked throughout western history. His  enthusiasm and  observations will
>> be missed!
>>
>> Best,
>> Alice
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bonetools mailing list
>> Bonetools at listserv.niif.hu
>> https://listserv.niif.hu/mailman/listinfo/bonetools
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Bonetools mailing list
> Bonetools at listserv.niif.hu
> https://listserv.niif.hu/mailman/listinfo/bonetools
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://listserv.niif.hu/pipermail/bonetools/attachments/20240424/76cbc74a/attachment-0001.htm>