University of California, Berkeley anthropologist Margaret Conkey, one of the world's leading authorities on Stone Age art and artifacts from ice age Europe, will give a lecture at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Saturday, Feb. 3.
The presentation by Conkey, who directs the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley, will include a short video and slides, including images of remarkable cave paintings from France dating back as far as 32,000 years that depict rhinos, bears, lions and horses. The CU-Boulder anthropology department's 12th annual Distinguished Archaeology Lecture featuring Conkey is free and open to the public.
The talk will be held at 7 p.m. in room 270 of the Hale Science Building and will include a question-and-answer session with the audience. A public reception with Conkey will follow. Hale Science is located just east of Broadway and Pleasant streets and parking is available along University Avenue.
Conkey, who was named one of the "Fifty Most Important Women in Science" in 2002 by Discover Magazine, heads a team that has been surveying the landscape of southern France for traces of the day-to-day lives of the mysterious cave painters. The project is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and focuses on the Upper Paleolithic era roughly 40,000 years to 10,000 years ago.
The region under study by Conkey and her colleagues is adjacent to the Pyrenees Mountains and contains a number of important ice age cave sites. The team has combined aerial and surface-mapping techniques with an analysis of ancient artifacts from plowed cornfields and vineyards to better understand the lives of people who occupied the region.
The area includes Grotte Chauvet, an ice age cave discovered in 1994 by spelunkers that contains extinct animal fossils, footprints of ancient humans and hundreds of spectacular animal paintings. The paintings depict at least 13 types of animals - including lions, panthers, bears, horses, owls, rhinos, reindeer and hyenas - some of which are rare or absent in other European cave art from the period.
She also will be showing a video that discusses the red ochre pigments from naturally tinted clay that was used in some of the paintings, as well as body ornaments used by people during the Upper Paleolithic era. She will discuss how the elaborate cave art and the ancient bone, ivory and antler artifacts from the region provide clues about the social practices of ancient people.
Conkey, who received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1978, also is involved in studies of gender and feminist perspectives in archaeology in past human societies. She has challenged the theory that ancient cave art like that found in France and elsewhere in the world was primarily a male spiritual practice to help ensure success in big game hunting.
Conkey, who holds an endowed chair at UC Berkeley titled The Class of 1960 Professor of Anthropology, has edited several books and authored a number of book chapters and articles. They include "Hunting for Images, Gathering up Meanings: Art in Hunter-Gatherer Societies" (2001); "Rethinking Figurines: A Critical View from Archaeology of Gimbutas, the 'Goddess and Popular Culture" (with Ruth Tringham, 1998); and "Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory" (edited with Joan Gero, 1991).
The Feb. 3 event is sponsored by Western Cultural Resource Management of Boulder.