Gabriel Camps - Biography

Biography

Gabriel Camps was born in Misserghine (Algeria). He studied first in Oran later in Algiers and graduated as PhD at Algiers University with a research about Massinissa, called Aux origines de la Berbérie (To the origins of the Berbers).

In 1959, Gabriel Camps entered the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). From 1962 to 1969, he worked as director of the Centre de recherches anthropologiques, préhistoriques et ethnologiques (CRAPE) and of the National Ethnographic and Prehistoric Museum of Bardo at Algiers. He also directed the Institut de recherches sahariennes and the magazine Libyca.

In 1969, he moved to Aix-en-Provence, where he worked as professor of the University of Provence. There he founded the Laboratoire d'anthropologie et de préhistoire de la Méditerranée occidentale (LAPMO), frequented by numerous students, mostly from Maghreb countries.

Gabriel Camps studied the pre-Roman epochs of North Africa, but also the Berber kingdoms, the African tribes, the Libyan scripts, and the Punic world. Most of this work focussed on Berber history and in 1984 he was the founder and first editor-in-chief of the Encyclopédie berbère, launched under the aegis of UNESCO.

The biggest part of Camps's research was done in Algeria, although he worked also on Corsica.

He died in 2002; on his death, the Algerian Minister of Culture expressed his condolences to the University