mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines^1 Table of Contents by LeRoy McDermott This study explores the logical possibility that the first images of the human figure were made from the point of view of self rather than other and concludes that Upper Paleolithic "Venus" figurines represent ordinary women's views of their own bodies. Using photographic simulations of what a modern female sees of herself, it demonstrates that the anatomical omissions and proportional distortions found in Pavlovian, Kostenkian, and Gravettian female figurines occur naturally in autogenous, or self-generated, information. Thus the size, shape, and articulation of body parts in early figurines appear to be determined by their relationship to the eyes and the relative effects of foreshortening, distance, and occlusion rather than by symbolic distortion. Previous theories of function are summarized to provide an interpretive context, and contemporary claims of stylistic heterogeneity and frequent male representations are examined and found unsubstantiated by a restudy of the originals. As self-portraits of women at different stages of life, these early figurines embodied obstetrical and gynecological information and probably signified an advance in women's self-conscious control over the material conditions of their reproductive lives. LE ROY MC DERMOTT is Associate Professor of Art at Central Missouri State University (Warrensburg, Mo. 64093, U.S.A.). Born in 1943, he was educated at Oklahoma State University (B.A., 1965) and at the University of Kansas (M.A., 1973; Ph.D., 1985). His research interests lie in the psychology of visual perception and art history. He has published "The Structure of Artistic Evolution: An Interdisciplinary Perspective," in /Problems of Method: Conditions of a History of Art (Proceedings of the 24th International Congress of the History of Art, Bologna, Italy, September 1O-18, 1979)/ (Milan: L'Electa Editrice, I982), and (with C. H. McCoid), "Towards Decolonizing Gender: Female Vision in the European Upper Paleolithic" (American Anthropologist, in press). The present paper was accepted 27 IV 95, and the final version reached the Editor's office 11 VIII 95. The world's oldest surviving works of art fashioned after the human image appear in the archaeological strata of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe, shortly after /Homo sapiens sapiens/ emerged onto the center stage of biocultural evolution. Questions about their meaning and significance began with Piette's (1895) and Reinach's (1898) early descriptions of finds from the rock shelters and caves of southern France and northern Italy. Since these pioneering efforts, several hundred additional images have been identified from the European Upper Paleolithic, most notably from modern France, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The rich possibilities raised by a century of comparative and interpretive study have yet to generate a consensus about why our ancestors first began to create representational images of the human body or what functions they initially served (Conkey 1983). This study challenges the assumption that images of the human figure were first created from the point of view of other human beings and argues instead that the art of representing the human body originated with visual information derived primarily from the physical point of view of "self." After restudying the originals from this neglected point of view,^2 I conclude that the oldest images of the human body literally embody egocentric or autogenous (self-generated) visual information obtained from a self-viewing perspective (McDermott I985 ). Furthermore, since all the earliest, best-preserved, and most refined pieces appear to be analog representations^3 of women looking down on their changing biological selves, I conclude that the first tradition of human image making probably emerged as an adaptive response to the unique physical concerns of women and that, whatever else these representations may have symbolized to the society which created them, their existence signified an advance in women's self-conscious control over the material conditions of their reproductive lives. Before representational art or mirrors, there were only two sources of visual information about human appearance-either one's own body or that of another human being^4 . At the beginning of art history there would have been no a priori reason to choose one source over the other. Admittedly, there is the practice of more recent millennia to influence our thinking, but what other basis do we have for assuming that at the beginning of image making a prehistoric artist would "naturally" have chosen to represent another human being rather than self? To determine what choice of visual information actually prevailed at the beginning of representation in the Upper Paleolithic, the attributes of the surviving images should be experimentally examined for the structural regularities predicted if the artist's body served as the original model. There is no reason to suspect that information from direct visual self-inspection has changed since the Upper Paleolithic, and thus the image projected onto the retina of a woman living today constitutes the visual analog of that perceived by her long dead ancestors. What modern females see when looking down upon themselves can be photographically simulated and compared with the original artifacts viewed from a similar perspective. When the distinctive form and content of this self-generated information is thus compared with the attributes of the earliest human figures similarly seen, a strongly naturalistic and lifelike correspondence is in fact routinely encountered. In the first representations of the human body, the "disembodied" view of objective anatomical proportions which governs modern scientific thinking appears to have been less important than the optically "correct" relationships of a more immediate subjective perspective^5 . Next: The First Human Images <2.htm>