Renowned Paleobiologist, Artist, and Author to Deliver Convocation at Carleton College

R. Dale Guthrie, Distinguished Paleobiologist and Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, will deliver the weekly convocation address at Carleton College on Friday, October 15 at 10:50a.m. in the Skinner Memorial Chapel. Widely known for his landmark study, The Natural History of Paleolithic Art (University of Chicago Press, 2006), Guthrie was the first to use information and ideas from natural history and studies of human universals in approaching the thousands of art images made by the members of the Eurasian Ice Age Bands. While art historians have wrestled with these images for years, Guthrie was the first scientist to weigh in on Paleolithic art as artifacts of a complex, breathing society. His presentation, entitled “Evolution of Art, Morality, and Romantic Love in the Ice Age Human Band,” is free and open to the public.

Over the past few decades, Guthrie’s hunting experience and hobbies in painting and sculpture collided with his scientific studies, leading to his work in The Natural History of Paleolithic Art. With a natural historian’s keen eye for observation and a lifetime of experience using bones and other artifacts to piece together past human and environments, Guthrie demonstrates that Paleolithic art is a mode of expression we can comprehend to a remarkable degree and that the perspective of natural history is integral to that comprehension.

Guthrie received his Ph.D from the University of Chicago and has since that time taught at the University of Alaska. Among his many honors, Guthrie was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize, was a Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and was awarded the Kirk Bryan Award in Research Excellence for his book Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe (University of Chicago Press, 1989). His many other books and papers have covered a wide range of topics, including evolutionary dwarfing, social anatomy, causes of extinctions, climatic change, and human evolution.

The Skinner Memorial Chapel is located on First and College Streets in Northfield. For more information regarding the convocation please contact the Office of College Relations at (507) 222-4309.