Luc Laporte

Luc Laporte is Research Director at CNRS (France). He is a specialist of the Neolithic period in Europe, and on the subject of megaliths in general, and is the author of more than 140 scientific articles in international journals. He has written a book on the megaliths of western France and edited several reference collective works on the megaliths of Western Europe and Africa megaliths, for the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods. His field works focused mostly on the study of reference sites...See more

Luc Laporte is Research Director at CNRS (France). He is a specialist of the Neolithic period in Europe, and on the subject of megaliths in general, and is the author of more than 140 scientific articles in international journals. He has written a book on the megaliths of western France and edited several reference collective works on the megaliths of Western Europe and Africa megaliths, for the Neolithic and Protohistoric periods. His field works focused mostly on the study of reference sites such as the tumulus C of Pere in Prisse-la-Charriere (France) and the World Heritage megalithic site of Wanar (Senegal), but also in East Africa (Djibouti) and South America (Argentina, Peru). He has been teaching at the Universities of Rennes for more than twenty years, and his expertise is regularly sought by various national or international institutions (UNESCO, National Geographic, CNRA, ANR, Fondation de France, etc.). Tara Steimer-Herbet is a graduate of Paris 1 - Pantheon La Sorbonne where she carried out her doctoral research on developing a methodological approach to Middle Eastern archaeology. Her research led her to become particularly interested in megalithism, and the way this phenomenon is expressed in the cultural and funerary practices of the Levant and western Arabia during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. In 2005 she excavated a sanctuary in Hadramawt (Yemen) and since 2010 has focussed on the megalithic phenomenon in Indonesia. Her research efforts currently concentrate on the preservation of megalithic monuments in the Akkar region of Lebanon as well as on characterising the megalithic phenomenon of the 3rd and 2d millennium BC in the Kuwait region of al-Subiya, Dr Steimer currently teaches 'archaeological methodology' and 'megalithism in the world' at the Laboratory of Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. See less