Leslie Van Gelder

Leslie Gail Van Gelder (born January 27, 1969) is an American archaeologist, writer, and educator whose primary work involves the study of Paleolithic finger flutings in Rouffignac Cave and Gargas Cave in southern France.

Biography Van Gelder was born in 1969 in Manhattan. As daughter of American Museum of Natural History curator Richard Van Gelder, she spent periods of her childhood involved in field work with him in East Africa and in the U.S. National Parks. Later work showed the role of women and children in the creation of cave art in Rouffignac. Their application of Zipf's Law from communications theory also gave the first replicable methodology for determining whether or not fluted panels represented purposeful communication or a proto form of writing.

Van Gelder continues to research in Rouffignac and Gargas caves and lectures internationally. Her current research focuses on the role of children in both caves. She is a Program Director at Walden University's Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership.

In 2008, she moved to the Rees Valley of New Zealand near the community of Glenorchy. and is the chairperson of both the Glenorchy Heritage and Museum Group and the Glenorchy Dark Skies Sanctuary Group. She has led the Dark Skies Group since 2019 when the initial idea of establishing a certified dark sky place in Glenorchy was formed. After five years of work, the Tāhuna Glenorchy Dark Sky Sanctuary was certified by DarkSky International on February 3, 2025.

Gelder has been active in conservation in the region, and has served as executive officer of the Whakatipu Wildlife Trust. She is also co-chair of the Southern Lakes Sanctuary, and chairperson of the Queenstown-Lakes District Council climate reference group.

Family Gelder was married to archaeologist and theologian, Kevin Sharpe until his death in 2008. Richard Van Gelder, curator of Mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History, was her father. Lawrence Van Gelder, her uncle, was a senior editor at The New York Times until his retirement in 2008. Her brother, Gordon Van Gelder, is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction editor. Her brother Russell Van Gelder is chairman of ophthalmology at the University of Washington.

Publications

2004: Childhood in the church of Darwin. In Progress and Process. Terra Nova Monograph Series. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. 2004: Children and Paleolithic 'art': indications from Rouffignac Cave, France. International Newsletter on Rock Art 38:9–17. (With Kevin Sharpe)

2005: The gift of the anthropomorphic mind. Nature in Story and Legend. Fall: 8–13. 2005: Techniques for studying finger flutings. Society of Primitive Technology Bulletin 30, 68–74. (With Kevin Sharpe) 2006: A method for studying finger flutings. In Exploring the Mind of Ancient Man: Festschrift to Robert G. Bednarik, ed. P. Chenna Reddy. New Delhi: Research India Press.

2009: When the stories fled. Irish Pages. 4:2.

2010: Paleolithic finger flutings and the question of writing. In Whitehouse, R & Piquette, K. (eds). The materiality of writing. London: Cambria Press. 2010: New methods and approaches in the study of finger flutings. Proceedings from the IFRAO Conference: Pleistocene Art of the World. September 6–11, 2010. 2010: Ten years in Rouffignac Cave, France: A collective report on a decade of finger flutings research. Proceedings from the IFRAO Conference: Pleistocene Art of the World. September 6–11, 2010. 2010: Four forms of finger flutings as seen in Rouffignac Cave, France. In Bahn, P. (ed). An enquiring mind: Studies in honor of Alexander Marshack. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 269–285. (With Kevin Sharpe) 2010: Fluted Animals in the Zone of Crevices, Gargas Cave, France. Proceedings of the Eleventh Congress of the International Federation of Rock Art Organizations, Lisbon, Portugal, September 4–9, 2006. (With Kevin Sharpe)