Professor Nathaniel Dominy
Digital Scholarship Visiting Research Fellow, June - August 2023
Home Institution: Dartmouth College
Nathaniel Dominy is the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. He holds a BA in English Literature (Johns Hopkins University, 1998) and a PhD in Anatomy (University of Hong Kong, 2001). His postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago (2002-2004) motivated him to work at the intersection of humanistic and biological anthropology, particularly as it relates to the evolution, ecology, and meaning of sensory experiences across primates. His research tends to focus on central and eastern Africa, but his project at IASH will revolve around Upper Paleolithic cave art in France and Spain. Professor Dominy is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016), a past Fellow of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation (2007-2012), and a current Fellow in the Dartmouth Society of Fellows (2017-2023). He lives in Norwich, Vermont with his wife and two children.
Project title: Paleo Visions of Chauvet Cave: A Virtual Reality (VR) Experience at the Intersection of Art, Anthropology, and Digital Humanities
Public perceptions of Upper Paleolithic cave art are dominated by a few iconic compositions––e.g., the aurochs of Lascaux, the cave lions of Chauvet––but these images stem from well-lit photos or facsimile sketches, or perhaps Werner Herzog’s extraordinary film Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011). The caves themselves are closed to the public, though some (Altamira, Chauvet) invite tourism with precise full-scale replicas. Replica caves are effective at dispelling misconceptions of self-contained compositions. Visitors can walk through interconnected scenes; they experience narratives that unfold around them. But replica caves are also brightly lit, and “nothing," claimed Sigfried Giedon, "is more destructive to the true values of prehistoric art than the glare of electric light." This then, is the present state of things: it is difficult for the public to imagine how cave art was produced or experienced by Paleolithic peoples, and it is challenging for anyone to determine with any confidence the intent or meaning of individual artworks in wider webs of cultural practice. To partially remedy these challenges, the goal of this Digital Scholarship Visiting Research Fellowship is to further develop and release an open-source, open-access virtual reality (VR) experience that simulates the firelight used by Paleolithic peoples, as well as the unique reverberatory acoustics of Chavet cave. Experiencing cave art under the dim flickering firelight of fat-fueled stone lamps may inform debates on whether some artists intended an illusion of animal movement, while shaping the way we view caves as spaces of ritual and performance.