Paleolithic female figurines

[ArabellaScott]

Just spent some time reading up on ancient female figurines, and thought maybe FWR would find some of the material interesting.

https://archive.org/details/shamansqueensfig0000nels

Shamans, queens, and figurines : the development of gender archaeology

"Sarah Nelson, recognized as one of the key figures in studying gender in the ancient world and women in archaeology, brings together much of the work she has done over three decades into a single volume. The book covers her theoretical contributions, her extensive studies of gender in the archaeology of East Asia, and her literary work on the subject. Included with the selections of her writingtaken from diverse articles and books published in a variety of placesis an illuminating commentary about the development of her professional and personal understanding of how gender plays out in ancient societies and modern universities and her current thinking on both topics"--

https://archive.org/details/2744349/page/n1/mode/2up

Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines

Interesting paper suggesting that the exaggerated forms of many female figurines may be explained by the viewpoint of a woman looking down at her body.

'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 modem 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. '

Women in prehistory
by
Ehrenberg, Margaret R

'The search for prehistoric woman. Anthropological evidence. The behavior of other animals and primates. Archaeological evidence. -The earliest communities. The role of women in human evolution. Women in modern and Paleolithic foraging societies. Matriarchy, patriarchy, or equality. Mother goddesses or Venus figurines? -The first farmers. The discovery of agriculture. The expansion of agricultural communities. -The Bronze Age. Was Minoan Crete a matriarchy? Burials, grave goods and wealth in north-west Europe. A trade in women? Rock art in the Alps and Scandinavia. -The Celtic Iron Age. Domestic organisation in Iron Age Britain. Decoration on Hallstatt pottery and bronze vessels. -Literary sources. Prophets and priestesses. Descent and marriage patterns. Women in war. Tribal chiefs and commanders in battle '

https://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/notvenusfigurines.html

'They are not Venus Figurines' by Max Dashu

'The term “Venus figurine” is also widely used, which imposes an alien interpretative framework, not only because of its eurocentrism, but because it projects a narrow presumption of “sex object” onto iconography that has a far broader range of meanings and ceremonial uses. Some will say, “But Venus was a goddess — what’s wrong with that?” Few people are even aware that the naming itself originates from the Marquis de Vibraye’s sardonic description of a small paleolithic statuette found in 1864 on his Laugerie-Basse estate in Dordogne. The classically-educated aristocrat called her a "Vénus impudique,” seeing her as “immodest” in contrast to the Roman archetype of Venus Pudica.

The peoples of greater Scythia and their customs are very well evidenced - grave goods and skeletons, DNA, Greek vase paintings and the reports of Greek, Chinese and various other European writers spanning millennia.

Patriarchy existed in Ancient Greece alongside the equal societies of the Scythians. The Etruscans had a much greater degree of sex equality than the Romans who they lived alongside. No society is an Eden but patriarchy is not inevitable. The nomadic lifestyle of the Scythians and the fact that they lived their lives on horses were the crucial factors in creating a more equal society. Everybody had to contribute and it was inefficient to strictly divide roles by gender.

I would recommend you read Mayor's book - it's extremely well researched. I think you are bringing your prejudices to this argument about a subject you don't know much about. I don't blame you for your ignorance, because much of this information is new.

Treaclewell

Obviously the Goddess isn't real (I'm an atheist!) but Graves invented a sort of cipher to decode stories which have been handed down for generations but which don't seem to make sense. That's a really interesting aspect of it for me.

Who remembers The Women's History of the World, by Rosalind Miles? - a very popular / populist book from the 90s IIRC. I remember a theory in it that prehistoric people didn't know that it was sex that led to a pregnancy and a child being born, so to them, a mother was an incredibly powerful creator of life (hence all the 'fertility' type statues). Later when they worked out the role of men and penises, women lost this mystique and this was part of the reason women became less revered and powerful, and then to the rise of the patriarchy.

I have no idea if it's true, btw! But interesting.

IdaPrentice

I've heard that theory too and I think Graves subscribes to it in The White Goddess. I'm not sure.

On the one hand, maybe in the very early days of human existence, especially if women and men lived semi-separate lives (like elephants), but then they would also know about small animals where the timeline of copulation and the appearance of young/eggs would be so much shorter. And on a very basic level, they would know - male lions know, etc.
I think it was more the case that the qualities that humans had which were valuable were less dependent on brute strength and speed etc. It takes cleverness or experience to set traps, to identify which of two virtually identical plants is poisonous, intelligence and a good memory to know where to find water in a drought, that sort of thing. And if there was a famine, the men and the children died before the women. So perhaps it was more of a case of men's physical superiority not being that relevant a lot of the time?

(I keep misreading “Scythians” as “Slytherins”. It’s very disconcerting. 😶)

😂

What a fascinating thread! I'll have to go back over (and over!) to get the most from it. Thank you all. On an emotional level, when I stood in front of the Venus of Willendorf in the Natural History Museum in Vienna I was deeply moved. She made me feel very tearful. Something about the age of her, her voluptuousness, and her vulnerability really got to me.

Amazing thread thanks OP! Planning to return to explore the links when I have more time.

I’m far from an expert in this area (and maybe this is an existing theory) but I don’t find these ancient depictions of women mysterious or necessarily indicating female agency, in that making images of women (especially sexually attractive or exaggerated ones) is huge in our own society. Women consume images of women, men consume images of women. Women pay to have their sexually attractive body parts exaggerated. And we know in some societies sexy = voluptuous and that would make sense in a prehistoric society where food might be scarce. So maybe it’s less deep than we’d like to think IYSWIM. I feel bad being cynical about the lovely Venus figures but maybe men made them so they’d have them to look at - that would explain why they don’t need hands and feet!

This is a great thread, thankyou Arabella. Bookmarking to follow up later

Yes, but the Scythians are far closer us in time than they were to PREHISTORIC cultures.

Scythians, Greeks, Romans, Etruscans these are all from HISTORY, not PREHISTORY. They are also all PATRIARCHIES.

The Scythians did not have equality for women, it was not an equal society.
Yes, it had noblewomen, but rulership (kings) were almost exclusively male. Yes 20% of the warriors were female, but this doesn’t equate to sex equality. In burials of noblemen, you always find a sacrificed (murdered) female companion or two buried with him. You don’t find that in the burials of noblewomen….

I think perhaps you are confusing Herodotus story of Amazons with the Scythians, many historical fictions do speculate in such a fashion. But let’s not forget other tribes described by Herodotus including tribes of men with the heads of dogs, tribes of cyclops, tribes of men with the feet of goats, tribes that slept for six months of the year straight through…

I will finish with that I do know about PREHISTORY and I am trying to gently make you aware that all your examples from HISTORY are not examples of PREHISTORIC cultures.

No society is an Eden but patriarchy is not inevitable.

I didn’t say that a patriarchy was inevitable, I said it is highly unlikely that the majority of PREHISTORIC cultures were matriarchies in response to the paper referenced in the OP: “Women in modern and Paleolithic foraging societies. Matriarchy, patriarchy, or equality. Mother goddesses or Venus figurines?”

As a reminder, the Paleolithic prehistoric era covers from 2.5 million years ago to 12,000 years ago (10,000 BC)

Scythians were from 600 BC to 300 BC. They literally came 9,400 yrs AFTERWARDS. Yet you have been wittering on about them as if they were prehistoric.

This is worse than confusing the Romans in Britain in 66AD with the Normans in Britain of 1066AD as those two very different societies are only 1,000yrs apart.

So, please stop saying I don’t know about prehistory and that I am ignorant.

I am not the one that thinks they are posting about PREHISTORIC cultures but are listing HISTORIC cultures that came along over 9,000 years later. 🤦🏽‍♀️