BREUIL, HENRI-DOUARD-PROSPER

born Feb. 28, 1877, Mortain, Fr. died Aug. 14, 1961, L'le-Adam French archaeologist especially noted as an authority on prehistoric cave paintings of Europe and Africa. Breuil was educated at the Sorbonne and the Catholic Institute in Paris. Shortly after being ordained an abb (1897), he developed a strong interest in Paleolithic art, and he devoted much of his life to studying examples of prehistoric art in southern France, in northern Spain, and, during and after World War II, in southern Africa. He taught at the Institute of Human Paleontology, Paris (from 1910), and at the Collge de France (192947). Among his more than 600 publications, illustrated with his own copies of cave paintings and engravings, are La Caverne de Altamira (1906; The Cave of Altamira), with mile Cartailhac; La Caverne de Font-de-Gaume . . . (1910; The Cave of Font-de-Gaume . . .), with Louis Capitan and Denis Peyrony; and Les Combarelles . . . (1924; The Combarelles . . .), also with Capitan and Peyrony. His Quatre cents sicles d'art parital (1952; Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art) reveals Breuil's great scope of activities in this field. His paper Les Subdivisions du Palolithique suprieur et leur signification (1912; The Subdivisions of the Upper Paleolithic and Their Meaning) established for the period a classification system that has remained of enduring value.