Dr. Matt Cartmill (1943- )
Brief biography
Oral history interview recorded March 24, 2025
Interviewer: Bernard A. Wood
Although Matt Cartmill is best known for his influential contributions to our understanding of primate origins and the evolutionary history and functional morphology of early primates, he is a bona fide polymath whose has written authoritatively about an impressively broad range of topics including comparative cognition, epistemology, ethics, intellectual history, linguistics, phonology, scientific logic and systematics, for both specialist and general audiences.
After receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1970, Cartmill moved to Duke University, where he taught anatomy and anthropology for just over four decades before moving in 2011 to his present position in the Anthropology Department at Boston University. Throughout his career, Cartmill has combined fundamental research with teaching, both in the classroom and via written exposition.
Cartmill’s research has consistently challenged conventional wisdom about the evolutionary biology of primates and much more. Cartmill’s expository output has ranged from essays in Discover and Natural History to books such as A View to a Death in the Morning, a highly acclaimed synthesis of perceptions about the hunting practices of both modern humans and early hominins. Cartmill was also the senior author of Human Structure, an introductory anatomy textbook, and co-authored, with Fred Smith, The Human Lineage, a highly successful textbook surveying human evolution. Cartmill continues to be productive and provocative.
Matt Cartmill Oral History Videos
Oral History Transcript
The transcript and narrative supplement below are and free to read and download.