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History Reference: Ancient History & World History
:: Ancient History to the Middle Ages:
Vegetarianism to ʼAlī Biography
Venus Figurines
Temporal and Spatial Distribution, Explanatory Theories, Future
Directions for Research, Functionalist Accounts, Gynecological
Accounts., ébauches
The class of artifacts known as Venus figurines comprises an extremely
heterogeneous body of artifactual material from Eurasia, dating to the
Upper Paleolithic Period. Venus figurines include, on the one hand,
small and easily transportable three-dimensional artifacts or images
incised on portable supports, and on the other hand, two-dimensional
images deeply carved, light incised, and/or painted onto fixed surfaces
such as cave or rock-shelter walls. They range in height from 3 cm to 40
cm or more. While some researchers include in this class abstract images
(so-called “vulvae” and forms resembling an elongated “S” or upside-down
“P”), these are not discussed here.
The best-studied and most oft-pictured specimens in the “Venus figurine”
category are the realistically rendered and almost voluptuous images of
the female body, but these are not representative of the class as a
whole. There are also clear portrayals of the male body (e.g., from
Brassempouy, Laussel, and Dolní Vĕstonice) as well as numerous
generalized anthropomorphs (e.g., examples from Sireuil, Tursac,
Grimaldi, Dolní Vĕstonice, and Malt'a). Many specimens appear to be
purposefully androgynous, and those with only faces cannot be sexed at
all (e.g., specimens from Brassempouy, Mas d'Azil, Bédeilhac, and Dolní
Vĕstonice). Some may be no more than incomplete rough-outs (or
/ébauches/), and a rare few appear to be composite images of
anthropomorphs and animals (i.e., Grimaldi, Laussel,
Hohlenstein-Städel). There are examples with detailed facial features
(e.g., from Malt'a, Buret, and Dolní Vĕstonice), pronounced coiffures
but no facial details (e.g., Brassempouy and Willendorf), and many more
with neither face, hair, hands, nor feet rendered in any detail. Some
specimens, mostly from the Ukraine and Siberia, have body elaboration
interpreted as clothing, belts, and/or tattoos (e.g., especially from
the Kostenki group and Buret).
Beyond superficial morphology these artifacts have been worked from many
different raw materials, each possessing unique physical qualities that
were likely selected for their different attributes of workability,
availability, and/or overall surface appearance. Venus figurines were
made from ivory, serpentine, schist, limestone, hematite, lignite,
calcite, fired clay, steatite, and a few of bone or antler. While they
have been the subject of scholarly attention for more than a century, a
detailed understanding of the sequence of techniques employed to
fabricate them (in all their diversity) has been sorely lacking. Work
has only recently been started to study the relationship between raw
materials, techniques of fabrication, morphological appearance, and
prehistoric significance.
Most coffee-table art books and many well-known studies highlight only
what are considered to be the most visually striking specimens. Yet
Venus figurines include flat and apparently pre-pubescent female
subjects, images interpreted to be in various stages of pregnancy or of
the general female life cycle, as well as several obviously male
specimens. The preference in allowing such a heterogeneous class of
artifacts to be represented by the most voluptuous examples perhaps says
more about the analysts than it does about the artifacts. It betrays
their extraordinary diversity in morphology, raw materials, technologies
of production, and archaeological contexts through time and space. Some
theories to explain their prehistoric significance are now questioned
because they have overemphasized specimens representing only one side of
the morphological system.
Temporal and Spatial Distribution
Venus figurines date to three periods of the Upper Paleolithic. They
appear in the archaeological record between approximately 31,000 and
9000 b.p., but chronometric dating is problematic on several counts.
Their distribution through both time and space is episodic.
/Western Europe:/ the earliest examples here date to the
Gravettian (ca. 26,000 to 21,000 b.p.) and the
Magdalenian (ca. 12,300 to 9000 b.p.), with most
specimens associated with cave and rock shelter sites.
(The earliest renderings from the
French Aurignacian, ca. 31,000 to 28,000 b.p., are
the problematic so-called “vulvae” forms not discussed here.)
/Central Europe:/ specimens are primarily associated with the
Pavlovian (ca. 31,000 to 24,000 b.p.);
/Ukraine:/ anthropomorphic imagery is found throughout the
Kostenki-Avdeevo culture period (ca. 26,000 to 12,500
b.p.), and comes almost exclusively from open-air occupation sites;
/Siberian/ images date to the so-called
Eastern Gravettian (primarily ca. 21,000 to 19,000 b.p.).
Significantly, some regions with
well-established records of Upper Paleolithic human occupation have no
evidence of anthropomorphic imagery, including the Cantabrian region of
northern Spain and the Mediterranean region of southwestern Europe (with
the sole exception of Italy).
Explanatory Theories
Most explanatory theories treat Venus figurines as a homogeneous class
of data and collapse together more than 20,000 years of varied
production. Portable and immobile specimens are lumped together, and
what may be significant regional and temporal differences in
technologies, raw materials, and styles are often ignored. Contextual
differences between those specimens found at open-air sites, in cave
and/or rock shelters, and other geographic locales are typically
underestimated.
/Functionalist Accounts/
Today it is generally thought that Upper Paleolithic visual imagery,
including Venus figurines, transmitted through stylistic means
ecological and/or social information necessary to group survival. One of
the primary explanatory accounts for the appearance and geographic
distribution of Venus figurines focuses on ecological stress associated
with the ice sheets advancing well into northern Europe 20,000 to 16,000
years ago. According to this account, as resources became more difficult
to obtain, areas remaining occupied would have been able to sustain only
low population densities. Alliance networks forged by the exchange of
marriage partners could have counter-balanced these problems, and some
researchers believe that Venus figurines played an important role in
symbolizing and communicating information related to mating alliances.
The geographically widespread production of Venus figurines as part of a
system of information exchange could have permitted small groups of
prehistoric hunter-gatherers to remain in areas that, without alliance
connections, they might otherwise have had to abandon.
A second and far more questionable set of functionalist interpretations
derives from sociobiology. According to several authors, these are
representations of female biology that were fabricated and used for
erotic and sexual reasons by males and for male gratification and/or
education. While some of these explanations highlight the sensuality of
the voluptuous three-dimensional images and argue that they were used as
prehistoric sex toys or educational aids, others suggest that they
served as trophies to mark “brave” acts of rape, kidnapping, and
possibly murder. A genetic (and thus evolutionary) advantage was
supposedly conferred upon the makers/users, either by teaching and
practicing lovemaking skills or by publicizing physical prowess and
thereby gaining social advantage among one's peers. The inherently
androcentric and heterosexist bias in assumptions underpinning these
accounts has now come under close scrutiny and they are today considered
far less plausible than when originally proposed.
/Gynecological Accounts./
According to some, different Venus figurines literally depict
physiological processes associated with pregnancy and/or childbirth or
else signify the entire female life cycle. Some researchers note that
aspects of parturition are well represented, while still others stress
that the subject matter is womanhood and not just motherhood. In some
ways these (and other related) contemporary theories build on, but also
challenge the simplicity of, turn-of-the-century notions that they were
symbols of female fertility and magic (hence in part explaining their
original appellation—Venus).
Future Directions for Research
The use of multiple lines of evidence is a time-honored way to
understand the significance of prehistoric material culture. Attention
to different kinds of site. context, detailed understanding of various
techniques of fabrication, recognition of their diverse morphologies and
raw material, site-specific spatial information, and consideration of
other classes of artifacts with which Venus figurines were discovered
may all help turn attention away from what is compelling today and
toward whatever might have made them compelling in prehistory.[See also
Europe: The European Paleolithic Period
; Paleolithic:
Upper Paleolithic
; Rock Art:
Paleolithic Art .]
Bibliography and More Information about /Venus Figurines/
* Z. A. Abramova, Palaeolithic Art in the USSR, Arctic Anthropology
4 (1967): 1–179.
* Desmond Collins and John Onians, The Origins of Art, Art History 1
(1978): 1–25.
* Randall Eaton, The Evolution of Trophy Hunting, Carnivore 1
(1978): 110–121.
* Randall Eaton, Mediations on the Origin of Art as Trophyism,
Carnivore 2 (1979): 6–8.
* Patricia Rice, Prehistoric Venuses: Symbols of Motherhood or
Womanhood? Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 37 (1981): 402–414.
* Marija Gimbutas, /The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe/ (1982).
* R. Dale Guthrie, Ethological Observations From Palaeolithic Art,
in /La Contribution de la Zoologie et de l'Ethologie à
l'Interprétation de l' Art des Peuples Chasseurs Préhistoriques/,
eds. Hans-Georg Bandi, et al. (1984), pp. 35–74.
* Mariana Gvozdover, Female Imagery in the Palaeolithic, Soviet
Anthropology and Archaeology 27 (1989): 8–94.
* Sarah Nelson, Diversity of the Upper Palaeolithic ‘Venus’
Figurines and Archaeological Mythology, in /Powers of Observation:
Alternative Views in Archaeology/, eds. Sarah Nelson and Alice
Kehoe (1990), pp. 11–22.
* Clive Gamble, The Social Context for European Paleolithic Art,
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 57 (1991): 3–15.
* Marcia-Anne Dobres, Re-Presentations of Palaeolithic Visual
Imagery: Simulacra and Their Alternatives, Kroeber Anthropological
Society Papers 73–74 (1992): 1–25.
* Marcia-Anne Dobres, Reconsidering Venus Figurines: A Feminist
Inspired Re-analysis, in /Ancient Images, Ancient Thought: The
Archaeology of Ideology/, eds. A. Sean Goldsmith, et al. (1992),
pp. 245–262.
* Henri Delporte, /L'Image de la Femme dans l'Art Préhistorique/
(2nd Edition, 1993).
* Henri Delporte, Gravettian Female Figurines: A Regional Survey, in
/Before Lascaux: The Complex Record of the Early Upper
Palaeolithic/, eds. Heidi Knecht, et al. (1993), pp. 243–257.
* Jean-Pierre Duhard, /Reálisme de l'Image Féminine Paléolithique/
(1993).
Marcia-Anne Dobres
Vercingetorix Biography
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Venus
Figurines - Temporal and Spatial Distribution, Explanatory Theories,
Future Directions for Research, Functionalist Accounts, Gynecological
Accounts., ébauches