André Leroi-Gourhan on Technology: A Selection of Writings from the 1930s to the 1960s, ed. Nathan Schlanger, trans. Nils F. Schott – Hau Books, February 2025 – open access here

A selection of Leroi-Gourhan’s most important texts—many translated into English for the first time.

André Leroi-Gourhan is undoubtedly one of the most acclaimed figures of twentieth-century anthropology and archaeology. In France, his intellectual importance rivals that of the Claude Lévi-Strauss, yet Leroi-Gourhan’s major contributions are almost entirely unknown in the Anglophone world. This collection seeks to change that. This selection highlights some of his chief influences, such as elaborating a theory of technology, which argues that material culture focuses on the object in use and how use is a dynamic feature that has specific consequences for human evolution and human society. With serious ramifications for our understanding of material culture, putting Leroi-Gourhan’s thinking about technology into English will have an immediate and transformative impact on material culture studies.

Nathan Schlanger, The Invention of Technology: An Intellectual History with André Leroi-Gourhan – Cambridge University Press, January 2026; translation of L’Invention de la technologie: Une histoire intellectuelle avec André Leroi-Gourhan – PUF, January 2023

Interview at the Journal of the History of Ideas blog with Rae Bruml Norton

See also this interview with Stefanos Geroulanos for the Journal of the History of Ideas blog.