Lecture by Xavier Nueno

March 11, 2025

Planetary Depths. On the Origins of Material Culture

This session explores the discovery of ‘prehistory’ in the nineteenth century. Until the 1860s, the primary means of accessing the past had been through writing: However, at the intersection of emerging sciences such as geology, comparative anatomy and ethnology, a new way of interpreting the ‘silent remains’ of past civilizations was born. The study of ‘material culture’ inaugurated a new way of exploring the origins of humanity.