Once upon a time...the (hi)story of the concept of the chaîne opératoire in French prehistory

The concept of the chaîne opératoire was popularized in the English-speaking world for the first time in the Archaeological Review from Cambridge in 1990. At that time, the history of the integration of this concept into French prehistory had begun. It would take a few years for this process to be successfully completed and more years for the history of research in lithic technology to take this into account. However, the concept and its history have, since the 1990s, been the subject of particularly intriguing writing and rewriting issues. This article presents the state of knowledge on this matter 1) by exposing what could be called the 'official' version of this history and 2) by correcting it with concrete historiographical facts gathered in the literature. In doing so, it also speculates on the context and motivations of scholars involved in these projects of writing the concept of the chaîne opératoire.