Technical does not mean material - on Pierre Lemonnier's book

For many years now, Pierre Lemonnier has tried to convince the anthropological community of the importance of technology (in the French sense of a study of techniques). His early work had been marked by the necessity of insisting on the material dimension of human activities, an aspect of activity that many of his colleagues, intoxicated by the notion of a symbolic dimension, had a tendency to overlook. Hence Lemonnier's close connection with the great archeological tradition of Leroi-Gourhan (1993) and its ability to move from a close attention to gestures and actions on the material world, all the way to an assortment of artefacts able to enhance cognition, sensitivity and sociality.