Background
Émile-Valère Rivière de Precourt was born on April 22, 1835, in Paris, France, the son of a general practitioner.
1900
Rivière was awarded the Legion of Honour for his contribution to anthropology and speleology.
1918
French archaeologist and physician (1835–1922). Vintage matte-finish 10.75 x 13.75 portrait of Riviere by Gessford of New York, signed and inscribed below the image in black ink and dated April 15, 1918.
anthropologist physician scientist speleologist
Émile-Valère Rivière de Precourt was born on April 22, 1835, in Paris, France, the son of a general practitioner.
Riviere pursued a career in medicine after his graduation from the Lycee Bonaparte.
Riviere contemplated a career in medicine after his graduation from the Lycee Bonaparte and for a while was an intern at the Asile de Vincennes at Le Vesinet.
Because of ill health, Riviere journeyed to Cannes in 1868 and to Menton in 1869. In 1870, having settled at Menton, he began to explore the nine caves of the Baousse-Rousse, a promontory of Jurassic limestone just across the Italian border in the commune of Grimaldi. He sought and received permission from the Italian government to excavate the first four caves and to control access to the fifth, sixth, and seventh.
On 26 March 1872 Riviere uncovered, at a depth of 6.55 meters and about seven meters from the entrance of the fourth cave (Grotte de Cavillion), a nearly perfect adult male skeleton. It lay on its left side with its legs slightly flexed and its arms folded upward so that the left hand cradled its cheek. The skull bore a headdress made of more than two hundred perforated Nassa shells interspersed with twenty-two stag canine teeth. A garter of forty-one Nassa neritea adorned the left knee. On the forehead there rested a needle or dagger-like weapon made from a deer radius and under the back of the skull lay two broken triangular silex knives. The skull and implements buried with the skeleton were covered with powdered hematite, a substance also found in a small trench cut near the mouth.
During February 1873 Riviere excavated a skeleton from the sixth cave, and in June of the same year, he unearthed two more. The first two remains of adults were sprinkled with the ferruginous powder and were accompanied by shell, flint, and bone grave goods. The last, a youth of approximately fifteen, was interred face-down without ornaments and without the red coloration.
Explorations in the first cave in July 1875 yielded skeletons of two children, ages four to six. They were lying together in an extended position, arms at sides, feet outward. They were covered by a mantle of shells, a single flint interred between them. The children’s bones lacked the red powder.
The human remains were found in deposits also containing the bones of cave bear, hyena, rhinoceros, and stag. Riviere contended that they were contemporary with the animals and that they, therefore, dated from the Pleistocene. He argued, further, that the peroxide of iron sprinkled on the bones of the adults and the weapons buried with them were evidence that the Cro-Magnon peoples, of which he was convinced his discoveries were examples, practiced funereal rites. A description of his finds and the conclusions drawn from them are in his Paleontologie: De I'antiquite de I'homme dans les Alpes-Maritimes (1887).
Riviere's claims were vigorously contested at the time by most prehistorians. Gabriel de Mortillet, William Boyd Dawkins, and others believed that the skeletons had been buried in Pleistocene deposits by Neolithic peoples. The controversy over the geological age of the Baousse-Rousse skeletons continued until an archaeological team commissioned by Albert 1 of Monaco re-explored the Grimaldi caverns and produced indisputable evidence that Riviere had been correct.
Late in 1887 Riviere turned his attention to the caves of the Dordogne. In June 1887 he discovered a previously unknown chamber at the grotto of La Mouthe. Carved into the walls were representations of bison, ibex, reindeer, horse, and mammoth. The authenticity of the La Mouthe cave art was challenged, as the polychromes at Altamira, Spain, had been in 1879.
Riviere presented evidence that the carvings were partially covered by debris from both the Paleolithic and Neolithic and that therefore they had to be dated at least from the Paleolithic, but his discoveries remained controversial until after publication by Breuil and L. Capitan of their discoveries at Les Combarelles and Font-de-Gaume in 1901.
Émile Rivière was a member of the Société préhistorique française.