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*McDermott - Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines*
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Table of Contents <index.htm>
Previous: Chronological and Geographical Ditribution <3.htm> 

Previous Interpretations 

Much that has been written on the significance and function of Upper
Paleolithic female images involves some analogical or symbolic
hypothesis as to why they depart from an otherwise objective realism.
One enduring approach resolves the conflict by identifying this
recurrent incongruity with anomalous or unusual categories of visual
information. Whether scholars have found the Negroid race in Europe
(Piette 1902:773), extremes of the female life cycle (Rice 1981),
enlarged or hypertrophic breasts (Harding 1976), or obesity and the
physiological consequences of maternity (Duhard 1993a, b), the
possibility of observational exactness has exerted perennial
appeal-although sometimes with peculiar consequences. For example,
Piette (1902:775) saw enlarged fatty buttocks in a piece from Grimaldi
and institutionalized a long-lasting fascination with the unusual
condition of steatopygia. Although having little in common beyond
ampleness, the posteriors of subsequent discoveries at Willendorf and
Laussel in 1908, Lespugue in 1922, and Savignano in 1924 fueled the
lamentable tendency to see all prehistoric peculiarities of the buttocks
as steatopygous. 

Early this century, ethnographic observations encouraged the equally
pervasive idea that all prehistoric art was involved with hunting and
fertility magic (Reinach 1903). Originally focused on parietal art, the
hypothesis was extended with subsequent recognition of humans among the
animals. Barely recognizable Magdalenian "anthropomorphs" with animal
and human features and exuberantly female PKG-style figurines were
thought alike ritually engaged in ensuring the success of immediate and
future hunts (Bégouën, 1929a, b; Breuil 1952; Reinach 1903;
Saccasyn-Della Santa 1947:9-21). With or without the magical element,
the idea that PKG-style exaggerations signal a symbolic interest in
fertility and fecundity has been very influential (Abramova 1967b,
Burkitt 1934, Pales and de St.-Pereuse 1976, Ucko and Rosenfeld 1967). 

Passemard's 1938 demonstration that true steatopygia is in fact rarely
represented had the perverse consequence of only strengthening this idea
that the enormous hips (and breasts) of female figures had to be
symbolic. When the fascination of male scholars with such attributes
fused with magico-religious, ethnographic, and even Freudian ideas
(Neumann 1955:98), a host of analogical possibilities arose, ranging
from the aesthetic ideal of obese women (Schuchhardt 1926) and
ethological signals of "biological readiness" (Guthrie 1984:59) to
prosaic yearnings for erotic stimulation and other masculine sociosexual
drives (Absolon 1949:204; Barton 1940:131; Jelinek 1988:220; Levy
1948:58; Luquet 1930:110-11; Zotz 1955). For some it seemed obvious that
the bulging volumes of PKG-style figurines "were made, touched, carved,
and fondled by men" because "clearly no other group would have had such
an interest in the female form" (Collins and Onians 1978:12-14). For
another it was equally self-evident that this "early erotica" bore "a
great resemblance to the images portrayed in men's toilet stalls'' and
must be "an art made by men about male preoccupations" not unlike that
seen today in men's magazines (Guthrie 1984:59-71). The emphasis in
female images on sexual traits rather than personal features such as the
face was seen as a logical consequence of another perceived origin for
animal art -- as hunting trophies. As trophies depicting acts of rape,
kidnap, or murder, PKG-style images would have epitomized masculine
status symbols by representing "brave acts among males" to promote group
solidarity (Eaton 1978; 1979:7). 

Feminist scholars have soundly critiqued the methodological limitations
of the "decidedly androcentric" paradigm (Dolores 1992b:245) and
"hierarchized and gendered subject-object relationship" (Mack 1992:235,
237) operating in these and other male-centered analogical approaches. I
can only echo Dobres's conclusion that the attempt "to 'naturalize'
(male) heterosexual interests specific to Western industrial society" by
imposing them onto female images created 30,000 years in the past "is
without merit" (1992b:248). 

Finally, many others find the cause for the same apparent distortions of
the female figure in limitations imposed by the original material
(Abramova 1967b: 66; Breuil and Peyrony 1930:45; Clottes and Cerou
1970:435; Graziosi 1939:161). A useful review of such arguments is found
in Duhard's /Realisme del'image feminine paleolithique/ (1993b:157-59),
and although his claims for the accurate representation of physiological
histories in all Upper Paleolithic female images exceed the available
evidence, particularly for Magdalenian pieces, his conclusion that their
attributes reflect a "deliberate choice" and not the constraints of
materials is persuasive. 

Toward midcentury the enthusiasm for ethnographic
hunting-and-fertility-magic interpretations gave way to a concern for
"context" in Paleolithic art. Controlled excavation at rich Russian
sites found PKG-style figurines in the domestic context of hut floors,
storage pits, and niches (Hancar 1939-40) and led Efimenko (cited in
Abramova 1967b:81) to see female ancestor images at the core of a
matrilineal clan organization. The difficulties of inferring intent from
the archaeological context of these and later Russian discoveries are
discussed by Gvozdover (1989b:70-78), while discussion of the
"locational tendencies" preserved in western sites can be found in
Delporte (1993a:259-61) and Hahn (1993:23637). In spite of the meager
evidence preserved from many early excavations, context, writ large to
include all diachronic and synchronic variation, continues to dominate
questions of function and motivation. 

Contemporary cognitive and information-exchange models have also exerted
their influence (Gamble 1982, 1993, 1986). Although the microscopic
evidence which Alexander Marshack thought revealed lunar calendars has
been challenged (d'Errico 1989, White 1982), his hypothesis that Upper
Paleolithic art represented seasonal and other environmental
periodicities as part of a storied, time-factored symbolic system
remains a viable possibility. Marshack calls specific attention to the
probable operation in Upper Paleolithic cultures of "storied equations .
. . [about] the primary processes and functions of woman-including
maturation, menstruation, copulation, pregnancy, birth, and lactation"
(1991a:282). Along with Conkey, who suggested that PKG-style figures
might have been motivated by improvements in "obstetric practices" or
"neonatal care" (1983:222), Marshack deserves credit for being among the
first to recognize that female images could represent processes of
primary concern to the physical lives of women. 

The widespread worship of a mother goddess attested by the oldest
written records and the prevalence of female imagery during the
intervening Neolithic have been seen as evidence for the religious use
of earlier Upper Paleolithic female figures. Admittedly, there are
suggestive iconographical links, such as similar (but not identical)
"disproportionate sexual attributes" (Goldman 1960-63:8), but there has
been no conclusive demonstration of formal linkage (McDermott 1987).
Gimbutas argues persuasively for such a link (1981, 1982), but as do
most who make such claims she usually proceeds as if the link were
already established (Mellaart 1967, 1975; Stone 1976). Unfortunately, as
Ucko pointed out in 1968, it is impossible to eliminate any number of
equally plausible sacred and/or profane functions if the apparently
distorted attributes of PKG-style images are indeed arbitrary symbols
for which the code has not been preserved. 

By limiting itself to physical processes known to be the same today as
during the Upper Paleolithic, my hypothesis minimizes the projection of
a modern subject's ideology into prehistory (Mack 1992:239). Unlike an
analogy, which only assumes that "the same causal mechanisms that
operated in Upper Paleolithic Europe" also operate today (Layton
1992:213), it can be experimentally tested. How and what a contemporary
woman can or cannot physically see of her own body without the
assistance of technology can be objectively determined. For women,
palpable proof or refutation could begin with their own observations,
whereas men can only approximate or simulate what a woman sees. 

Next: Stylistic Variability and Choices in Visual Information <5.htm>