Henri Lavachery
Encyclopedia
Henri Alfred Lavachery (May 6, 1885 - December 1, 1972 ) was a Belgian archeologist
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

 and ethnologist
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...

. In 1934, he became the first professional archaeologist to visit Easter Island
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

, and was later known for his study of its art. He was curator at the Royal Museums of Art and History
Royal Museums of Art and History
The Royal Museums of Art and History is a group of museums in Brussels, Belgium...

 during the 1940s, and founded the Society of Americanists in Belgium
Society of Americanists in Belgium
The Society of Americanists in Belgium is an anthropological society in Brussels, Belgium. It was founded by Henri Lavachery. A partner of Université catholique de Louvain, SAB publishes the journal Bulletin de la Société des Américanistes de Belgique. Its second Congress was held in 2002....

 in 1928.

Early years

Lavachery was born in Liège
Liège
Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....

 in 1885, and received his doctorate in classical philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 from the University of Brussels
Free University of Brussels
The Free University of Brussels was a university in Brussels, Belgium. In 1969, it split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel....

 in 1908. Thereafter, he traveled extensively through Europe, participating in various internships, including one at the Frobenius Institute
Frobenius Institute
The Frobenius Institute is Germany's oldest anthropological research institute. Founded in 1925, it is named after Leo Frobenius. The institution is located at Gruneburgplatz 1 in Frankfurt am Main...

 in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

, and another in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 under the direction of Paul Rivet
Paul Rivet
Paul Rivet was a French ethnologist, who founded the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. He was also one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the February 6, 1934 far right riots.Rivet proposed a theory according to...

 at the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro
Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro
The Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro was the first anthropological museum in Paris, founded in 1878...

.

Career

In 1933, fascinated by the objects created by the Rapa Nui people, Lavachery decided to develop an expedition to Easter Island, with Rivet's support. The expedition took place between July 30, 1934 and January 3, 1935. It was headed by Charles Louis Watelin, a French archaeologist who died during the trip in Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of a main island Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego divided between Chile and Argentina with an area of , and a group of smaller islands including Cape...

. Other expedition members included the Swiss anthropologist Alfred Métraux
Alfred Metraux
Alfred Métraux was a Swiss anthropologist and human rights leader.-Early life:Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Metraux spent much of his childhood in Argentina where his father was a well known surgeon resident in Mendoza. His mother was a Georgian from Tbilisi...

, and a Chilean
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

 doctor, Dr. Israel Drapkin, who provided leprosy
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...

 care for affected indigenous people. The expedition discovered that the island's large stone statues
Moai
Moai , or mo‘ai, are monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Chilean Polynesian island of Easter Island between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the...

 had been made by the ancestors of the current occupants, who were of Polynesian descent, and not by members of a prior civilization who had disappeared. Lavachery noted that the island's petroglyphs were sometimes discovered simultaneously by the trip's explorers and the island dwellers. His later observations of the petroglyphs in 1939 suggested a degree of artistic diversity among the creators. According to Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a background in zoology and geography. He became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed by raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands...

, although Lavachery was the only professional archaeologist to have visited the island prior to Heyerdahl's 1950s voyage, Lavachery had not attempted excavations, as the soil appeared too shallow.

In the 1930s, Lavachery also wrote about the art of the central African Kuba Kingdom
Kuba Kingdom
The Kuba Kingdom was a pre-colonial Central African state bordered by the Sankuru, Lulua, and Kasai rivers in the southeast of what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo...

, describing it as decorative rather than sculptural. This work was translated from the French to English by playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

. In the 1930s at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lavachery organized the first major exhibition of African art in Belgium.

In 1933, he became the assistant curator at Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, and in 1942, he became Chief Curator, taking over from Jean Capart
Jean Capart
Jean Capart was a Belgian Egyptologist, director of the El-Kab excavations from 1937 to 1939 and then 1945.- Bibliography :* Anne-Marie and Auguste Brasseur-Capart, Jean Capart ou le rêve comblé de l’égyptologie, Bruxelles, Arts & Voyages / Lucien De Meyer, 1974, 236 pp., ill.;* Jean-Michel...

. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Lavachery began to reorganize the institution. He was Professor of non-European art at the Free University of Brussels
Free University of Brussels
The Free University of Brussels was a university in Brussels, Belgium. In 1969, it split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel....

, as well as a member of the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium and its permanent secretary from 1957 to 1960. In addition, he founded the Society of Americanists in Belgium
Society of Americanists in Belgium
The Society of Americanists in Belgium is an anthropological society in Brussels, Belgium. It was founded by Henri Lavachery. A partner of Université catholique de Louvain, SAB publishes the journal Bulletin de la Société des Américanistes de Belgique. Its second Congress was held in 2002....

 in 1928.

Personal life and legacy

Created in 1961, the Prix Henri Lavachery (English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

: Henri Lavachery prize) is awarded every five years by the Royal Academy of Belgium for achievements in ethnology.

Lavachery was awarded the Grand Officer Order of Leopold, Commander of the Order of the Crown
Order of the Crown (Belgium)
The Order of the Crown is an Order of Belgium which was created on 15 October 1897 by King Leopold II in his capacity as ruler of the Congo Free State. The order was first intended to recognize heroic deeds and distinguished service achieved from service in the Congo Free State - many of which acts...

, Medal of the Armed Resistance 1940-1945
Medal of the Armed Resistance 1940-1945
The Medal of the Armed Resistance 1940-1945 is a Belgian medal which was awarded to all members of the armed resistance during the Second World War and to members of the intelligence service who operated in occupied areas.-See also:...

, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He died in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 in 1972.

Partial list of works

  • Deux fragments de la statuaire monumentale des Mayas (192?)
  • Les arts anciens d'Amérique au Musée archéologique de Madrid (1929)
  • Enquête sur l'importance respective du marché intérieur et du marché extérieur pour l'industrie belge (1933)
  • La mission Franco-Belge dans l'Ile de Paques (Juillet 1934-Avril 1935) (1935)
  • Contribution à l'étude de l'archéologie de l'île de Pitcairn (1936)
  • Sculpteurs modernes de L'lle de Pagues (1937)
  • Les pétroglyphes de l'île de Pâques (1939)
  • Vie des Polynésiens (1946)
  • Les Amériques avant Colomb (1946)
  • Art précolombien (1947)
  • Tombeau de Georges Marlow (1951)
  • Hypothèse pour une évolution primitive des arts plastiques (1952)
  • Statuaire de l'Afrique noire (1954)
  • Les techniques de protection des biens culturels en cas de conflit armé (1954)

See also

  • Anthropology
    Anthropology
    Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

  • Archaeology
    Archaeology
    Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

  • Ethnography
    Ethnography
    Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

  • Easter Island
    Easter Island
    Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

  • Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium
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