“At the Heart: Honoring Palaeolithic Matrifocal Human-Animal Connection”

with Susan Moulton

Thursday,  October 30, 2025 at 3:00 PM Eastern Time  

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Influenced by First Nation Indigenous concepts, Nature and animal behavior, this research expands the foundational idea of “personhood” to include all forms of life, especially the behavior and central role of the “sacred female/mother” in diverse species, including Paleolithic Hominins, and the role of the wise, older “lead” females in free-ranging mammalian herds and plant communities as key to the early understanding of human social structure and expression. To understand the complexity of the remote past we must consider the experience of the first Hominins who lived in synchrony with all sentient aspects of their natural environment, including animals and plants.

Few scholars have demonstrated an expanded awareness of the interconnectedness of life within Nature or the impact of the sentience and behavior of animals on the earliest human cultures, or how the diversity of life within ecosystems has functioned to influence human beliefs, symbols, stories, mythic systems and other forms of expression. This study challenges truncated archaeological methodologies of inherited patriarchal Eurocentric overviews and biases with their Cartesian opposition between Nature and human “civilization,” presuming humans have culture whereas non-human life forms do not.

Susan Moulton  has lived with animals from an early age and began riding horses at the age of three. For the past 52 years she has lived in rural Sonoma County, California on a small farm with an array of rescued animals. Susan has learned a lot from each species, using what she has learned from them to raise her two sons. To support her lifestyle, Susan was a university professor (Art/Art History) for 44 years, teaching over one hundred courses, and chairing the Art and Art History Department, and the University Faculty. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Susan has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Carnegie Foundation Research Grant. She is the co-founder, with Joan Marler, of the International Institute of Archaeomythology. Susan has sponsored many M.A. students and PhDs, and has been blessed to share her ideas in publications and conferences globally, including numerous experiences with Indigenous Peoples in the US and abroad. Currently she is finishing a book that combines everything she loves: animals, art history, archaeology, and ecology, which is the subject of her Salon.

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Upcoming Scholar Salon (3pm Eastern Time):

October 30, 2025:  From the Heart: the Human Animal Connection with Susan Moulton

This Salon recording will also be available to members when processed after the event.