This material study dedicated to scientific contacts of researchers in the natural sciences in the postwar period mediates the memories the geologist Pavel Bosák had of his contacts in Poland in the 1970s and 1980s. It focuses on the significance of cooperation created from below, which historiographies of scientific institutions generally don’t reflect. The purpose is to show similar processes in the scientific networks of mathematicians, astronomers, geographers, and geologists, which the histories of the individual disciplines overlook. The central theme is the Speleological School (Speleologická škola in Czech; Szkoła Speleologiczna in Polish), a regularly-convened symposium organized in Poland since 1975. This study recapitulates the contacts that Pavel Bosák established at the annual symposium and their significance for his professional activities in Czechoslovakia. The analysis of an interview conducted using the oral history method shows how the geologists resisted the reduction of the significance of their expert culture to the tasks provided in the state-planned economy and how, starting in the 1970s, they transformed the transfer of knowledge and the establishing of international contacts, the implementation of new methods, and of interdisciplinary cooperation in the fields of geology, speleology, geography, geomorphology, and hydrogeology.
This article begins when Jean Perrot (1920–2012), a young French archaeologist, arrives in British Mandate Palestine, at the end of the Second World War. Retracing his career and presenting the Israeli institutions and networks he relied on allows us to measure his role in the shaping of the field of prehistory during the formative years of the State of Israel. This takes us back in time, to the origins of the French prehistoric–presence in Palestine in the 19th century and its evolution during the British Mandate times. Lastly, this contextualized approach, on the longue durée, contributes to the history of the establishment, in Jerusalem, of a new French research structure dedicated to prehistory in the second half of the 20th century.
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Cet article débute en retraçant le parcours de l’archéologue français Jean Perrot (1920–2012) qui arrive en Palestine à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. En examinant sa participation au façonnement du champ préhistorique au cours des premières années formatrices de l’État d’Israël, nous présentons les institutions et réseaux israéliens sur lesquels il s’appuie. Ceux–ci nous conduisent ensuite à remonter le temps de la présence préhistorienne française en Palestine et à son développement lors de la période mandataire. Cette approche contextualisée, nous permet enfin d’aborder la création d’une nouvelle structure de recherche française dédiée à la préhistoire à Jérusalem, l’actuel Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem et de présenter les réflexions qu’elle suscite.
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