Neolithic "Venus" Figurine Discovered in Racibórz, Silesia

From Science and Scholarship in Poland

Archaeologists discovered a unique woman figurine in Silesia
28.08.2013

Unique on the Polish scale clay figurine from the Neolithic period (fourth millennium BC) depicting a stylised woman figure has been found during the excavations in Racibórz.

"This find is a sensation in the archaeological world, because so far only a few and small fragments of human figurines from this period have been discovered" - told PAP Jacek Pierzak from the Silesian Regional Office for the Protection of Monuments.

Photo by Piotr Szejnoga

The object was discovered during the survey of the planned flood reservoir Dolna Odra, conducted by the Archaeological Rescue Research Team at the Centre for Prehistoric and Medieval Studies of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology PAS in Poznań.

The figurine was dubbed "Venus of Racibórz" because it is similar to other finds of this type known from Paleolithic sites. It has clearly shown legs, wide hips, breasts, and three nodules at the top, the central of which is a schematic representation of the head, while the outer two are interpreted as hands raised in a gesture of oration. Figurine from Racibórz, however, is made of different material, than Venus - it is made of clay, while Venus was sculpted in stone. Discoverer of the "Venus of Racibórz" is Marek Anioła, archaeologist who conducts work at the site.

"Female figurines are associated with the worship of fertility and the mother goddess, they are also considered by some scientists to be evidence of the importance of women in the Neolithic period" - said the coordinator of the archaeological work Dr. Przemysław Bobrowski.

It's not only interesting archaeological discovery made during the work in the Racibórz area. The study includes 15 archaeological sites from different periods. They are part of a larger project conducted by the Consortium of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the University of Wroclaw and the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, at the request of the Regional Water Management Authority in Gliwice.

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland
szz/ tot/ mrt/
tr. RL

Note the description above.  I don't know about you, dear readers, but what I see is a headdress, not a symbolic representation of a woman with a pin-sized head and raised hands.  Nope - this figurine's arms/hands are held behind her back (Is she bound???)  The image shows the front (on the left) and back (on the right) sides of the figurine.  I cannot see any other explanation for what look like arms to me held behind one's back than that -- they are arms.  So, if this lady's arms are behind her back, they cannot simultaneously be held above her head in a gesture of adoration, exultation or greeting, unless she had two sets of arms.  But why would one set of arms be so clearly depicted, and the arms held above her head not be depicted at all?

Doesn't make sense to me.  I'm going with the easiest explanation for what appear to be arms held behind her back is probably the correct one.  That makes the headdress idea extremely intriguing, doesn't it, because to my eyes, that headdress looks more or less like a crown -- or perhaps it's a 4th millenium BCE rendition of a spikey punk style hairdo, held in place with gel made from the hoofs of aurochs...

A Different View on Those Ancient "Venuses"

'Palaeo-porn': we've got it all wrong

• 13 November 2012 by Jude Isabella
• Magazine issue 2890

The idea that curvaceous figurines are prehistoric pornography is an excuse to legitimise modern behaviour as having ancient roots, says archaeologist April Nowell

 

"Lady of Villners-Carbonnel", 2011.

 

Which Palaeolithic images and artefacts have been described as pornography?

The Venus figurines of women, some with exaggerated anatomical features, and ancient rock art, like the image from the Abri Castanet site in France that is supposedly of female genitalia.

 

You take issue with this interpretation. Who is responsible for spreading it, journalists or scientists?

People are fascinated by prehistory, and the media want to write stories that attract readers - to use a cliché, sex sells. But when a New York Times headline reads "A Precursor to Playboy: Graphic Images in Rock", and Discover magazine asserts that man's obsession with pornography dates back to "Cro-Magnon days" based on "the famous 26,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf statuette...[with] GG-cup breasts and a hippopotamal butt", I think a line is crossed. To be fair, archaeologists are partially responsible - we need to choose our words carefully.

 

Having studied Upper Palaeolithic figurines closely, what did you find?

They are incredibly varied beyond the few figurines seen over and over again: the Venus of Hohle Fels, the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus of Dolní Veˇstonice. Some are male, some are female; some are human, some are animals or fantastical creatures; some wear items of clothing, others do not. A recent study by my doctoral student Allison Tripp and her colleague Naomi Schmidt demonstrated that the body shapes of female figurines from around 25,000 years ago correspond to women at many different stages of life; they're a variety of shapes and sizes. All of this suggests that there are multiple interpretations.

 

Aren't other interpretations of palaeo-art just as speculative as calling them pornographic?

Yes, but when we interpret Palaeolithic art more broadly, we talk about "hunting magic" or "religion" or "fertility magic." I don't think these interpretations have the same social ramifications as pornography. When respected journals - Nature for example - use terms such as "Prehistoric pin-up" and "35,000-year-old sex object", and a German museum proclaims that a figurine is either an "earth mother or pin-up girl" (as if no other roles for women could have existed in prehistory), they carry weight and authority. This allows journalists and researchers, evolutionary psychologists in particular, to legitimise and naturalise contemporary western values and behaviours by tracing them back to the "mist of prehistory".

 

Will we ever understand what ancient art really means?

The French, in particular, are doing incredible work analysing paint recipes and tracing the movement of the ancient artists as they painted. We may never have the knowledge to say, "This painting of a bison meant this", but I am confident that a detailed study of the corpus of ice age imagery, including the figurines, will give us a window on to the "lived life" in the Palaeolithic.

Profile

April Nowell is a Palaeolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her paper "Pornography is in the eye of the beholder: Sex, sexuality and sexism in the study of Upper Paleolithic figurines", co-authored with Melanie Chang, will appear next year.

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Well, she may well be correct with respect to some of the figurines and representations found over the years; but then again, it's hard to dismiss the so-called of "Lady of Villners-Carbonnel" (photograph from a 2011 article) as something other than a representation of a very impressive woman, indeed.  Now, was she a fertility figure?  Was she meant to be a Mother Goddess?  Was she an icon of a powerful female shamanic figure?  Was she a representation of a female clan leader?  Who knows?  I do not agree with calling this kind of art "pornographic" but certainly it was a very important part of prehistoric humans' legacy to us today and until we can uncover thousands of  figurines such as this one, as well as male and animal representations, I think the lady dost protest a wee bit too much. 

Let's wait and see what we find in the future, what dating tells us, what our own eyes tell us, what context tells us (if anything), and for now, let's just enjoy and marvel at the unique and wonderful beauty of each and every one of these pieces that have been found.  Imagine surviving 5,000 years?  Imagine surviving 25,000 years?  Maybe I'm being totally lame-o here, but I do not think that so many figurines of female figures survived BY ACCIDENT.  Just saying...

"Earth Mother of the Somme"

As mother goddesses go, she is relatively young -- a mere 6,000 or so years old.  What is unique about her is that she is made of fired clay, and managed to survive, thanks to breaking apart during the firing process!  She also looks rather 'cyclidic', doesn't she...

From the independent.co.uk

The earth mother of all neolithic discoveries
John Lichfield

Paris

Saturday 10 December 2011

"Earth Mother of the Somme" or the "Lady of Villers-Carbonnel"

French archaeologists have discovered an extremely rare example of a neolithic "earth mother" figurine on the banks of the river Somme.

The 6,000-year-old statuette is 8in high, with imposing buttocks and hips but stubby arms and a cone-like head. Similar figures have been found before in Europe but rarely so far north and seldom in such a complete and well-preserved condition.

The "lady of Villers-Carbonnel", as she has been named, can make two claims to be an "earth mother". She was fired from local earth or clay and closely resembles figurines with similar, stylised female bodies found around the Mediterranean.

Although neolithic experts are revising their opinions, the figures have long believed to have been connected with the existence of a cult which worshipped a goddess of the hearth or of fertility.

The Somme "earth mother" appears to have broken into five or six parts while she was being fired between 4300 and 3600 BC. She was found in the ruins of a neolithic kiln at a French government "preventive" archaeological dig near Villers-Carbonnel on the banks of the river Somme in the département of the same name.

The figurine may be just the beginning of a vast archaeological harvest in Northern France in the next few years, stretching from palaeolithic times to the First World War. The French government's "preventive archaeology" agency, Inrap, has been given permission and the funds to explore 77 sites along the 60-mile course of the new 50m-wide Seine-Nord Europe canal for ocean-going barges linking the river Seine to Belgium and the Rhine.

The archaeologist in charge of the Villers-Carbonnel dig, Françoise Bostyn, told The Independent: "The statuette is very beautiful and remarkably preserved. We sometimes find fragments of such statuettes but rarely the whole figure."

The "earth mother of the Somme" may owe her survival, paradoxically, to the fact that she was broken while being made. Her various pieces were discovered in a collapsed kiln or oven.

Ms Bostyn said that the stylised figure, with inflated buttocks and thighs and rudimentary head and arms, closely resembled similar figures from the period found as far away as the Middle East.

Could the "lady of Villers-Carbonnel" represent the neolithic ideal of female beauty, long before the coming of fashion magazines, airbrushes and Photoshop?

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A big booty is still sought after by many women today...

Fake doctor arrested for illegal cosmetic surgeries, November 21, 2011,
ABC News. This is the doctor with "surgically" altered buttocks.

Are You Kidding? Modern Man Rediscovers Ancient Goddess Symbols!

This article - okay - I'm retracting my first statement, which was THIS ARTICLE IS A JOKE.  Forget I wrote that.  Instead, I'm just writing "Duh!" 

Gimbutas depicted such symbols in her many books on "Old European" culture that are twice as old as this one beginning - what - 30 years ago!  Those "zig-zags" - I call them "M's" and "W's" - wave patterns, are extremely ancient, dating back to at least 25,000 BCE and are found in many places in Europe; the symbols travel the width and breath of the Old World across time, and are evidence in the art work of Native Americans too.  The most likely explanation is not independent invention by relocating populations but that the extremely ancient patterns and symbols travelled with the people to the New World.   

What's the symbol for the primal waters of the deep in many ancient cultures in their later writing - DUH!  Wavy lines!  One that immediately comes to mind is "n-n" -- pronounced something like "nuuuun" in ancient Egyptian, drawn something like vvvv or wwww, -- in heiroglyphics.  It meant WATER, more importantly, the very first waters out of which the first mound of earth (the black dirt) arose, from which all things on earth were then created.  From the ancient waters of the deep came the first earth, and from the first earth all things of creation were made.

I don't have my notes/research from many years in front of me, so I'm working from memory, but these forms (wwww's and vvvvv's - zig-zags) are well documented by many researchers, not just Gimbutas. In many extremely early instances they were associated with carvings of "bird" or "eye" goddesses.  So making a big hoo-ha about this relatively young carving on an antler is, to my way of thinking, way out of proportion.  It is nice to see that the work of the early pioneers is being confirmed by modern-day discoveries, but they are adding nothing new to the subject and give scant credit to the work upon which they are building.  That's just not right.

From Discovery News
Stone Age Fertility Ritual Object Found
Etchings on a carved elk antler dating to nearly 11,000 years ago, may have been used to promote fertility
By Jennifer Vargas
February 4, 2011

A Stone Age-era artifact carved with multiple zigzags and what is likely a woman with spread legs suggests that fertility rituals may have been important to early Europeans, according to new research.

The object, which will be documented in the March issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, is made out of a large elk antler and has been radiocarbon dated to about 10,900 years ago.

"The ornament is composed of groups of zigzag lines and a human representation, probably a woman with spread legs with a short zigzag nearby," lead author Tomasz Płonka told Discovery News. "The woman may be nude, but the geometrical style of representation does not allow us to answer (this question)."

Płonka, a University of Wroclaw archaeologist, and his colleagues analyzed the object, unearthed by a farmer at Swidwin, Poland.

At first the scientists believed the geometrical figure carved onto the antler could have been either the mentioned woman, or a nude man raising his arms. Measurements to determine the ratio of the stick figure limbs, in addition to comparisons with other early human representations, lead the researchers to support the woman interpretation. [Turn it one way, it's a man with a long penis! Turn it the other way, it's a woman with raised legs!  Neolithic optical illusion, all within an economical sketch of  - how's that for pushing an art form back!]

Zigzags are very popular motifs on artifacts from many cultures throughout the world, with many possible meanings, but Płonka said, "I think our zigzag lines are connected with water and life symbolism." [Gee! Ya think?]

Rest of article. 

Ancient Female Figurine 'Factory' Uncovered

Reported at the Cyprus Mail (online):
Ancient figurine ‘factory’ uncovered
Published on June 10, 2010

A BRITISH archaeology team has located evidence for the production of cruciform figurines such as the Idol of Pomos (image, left, not from the article), which is depicted on the Cypriot one and two euro coins, the Antiquities Department said yesterday.

The evidence comes from a settlement of 3000 BC located at Souskiou near Palaepaphos. The Pomos sculpture represents a woman with her arms spread. It was probably used as a fertility symbol.

“This is the first time that such detailed information on this subject has come to light in Cyprus,” a statement from the Department said.

“Among the remnants of a house lay the tools for making the figurines together with abundant fragments or chippings from the initial stages of production. These come from pebbles and blocks of raw material which the sculptors obtained, ultimately from the Troodos Mountains. A further production stage is evident from roughouts in which the figures begin to emerge from the parent rock. Also present were nearly finished figurines that were discarded because of imperfections.”

This unique evidence will allow archaeologists to reconstruct the techniques used by the prehistoric artisans and to see how the craft was organised within the Chalcolithic community. They said it was already clear that the workshop functioned in a building where domestic tasks were also carried out.

“There were many such houses at Souskiou which must have been a vibrant centre for the production of these iconic images. Eventually it may be possible to establish the characteristics of the Souskiou style and so to source some of the many figurines in museums,” the announcement added.

In another part of the settlement, the team investigated “rich economic data” such as animal bone, ceramics, charcoal and bone needles. “Normally washed away by erosion, the material here was trapped beneath buildings that were constructed over this ashy dump of food remains. It may have been deposited by temporary visitors to Souskiou before it was formally settled,” it said.

The four-week field work at the site was conducted by a team from the Lemba Archaeological Research Centre and the University of Edinburgh under the direction of Professor Edgar Peltenburg.

5,000 Year Old "Venus" Figurine Found

Only goes to show, you can't keep a good woman down! The one photograph with the story isn't very good, but you can see the white "Venus" figurine on the left, and the "seal" on the right, held by the man in the photograph. Story at todayszaman.con 5,000-year-old Venus figure found in Çanakkale 25 September 2009, Friday A 5,000-year-old Venus figure has been found as part of an excavation being carried out in Çanakkale's Ezine district. The excavation began in the field three weeks ago in cooperation with Germany's University of Tübingen. Assistant Professor Rüstem Aslan, who is vice head of the excavation, told the Anatolia news agency that the aim of the dig is to find settlements outside Troy from the Bronze Age. Some interesting findings have been unearthed during the excavation, Aslan said. “We found a 5,000-year-old Venus figure, which used to represent woman at the time, as well as a seal with which people used to mark their belongings in prehistoric ages. Such a seal is a rare piece. In addition to these items, we also found stone axes, well-processed and embellished pots and spindle-whorls, which were used for spinning wool.”

Venus of Willendorf Celebrated

A feminine icon of fertility and goddessness receives her due. Mature women with post-menopausal "bulge" around the middle and bountiful breasts, revel in your beauty! Austrians fete voluptuous, prehistoric Venus By VERONIKA OLEKSYN, Associated Press Writer Thu Aug 7, 5:26 PM ET VIENNA, Austria - It's Venusmania in Vienna, where Austrians are celebrating the discovery 100 years ago Thursday of a tiny but voluptuous figurine that dates back 25,000 years to a time when mammoths roamed the region. Venus wine, Venus chocolates, and pancakes with Venus jam — Austria is going all out Friday to fete the limestone beauty known as the Venus of Willendorf for the hamlet along the Danube where archaeologists stumbled upon her a century ago. The Venus of Willendorf is just 4 inches tall but is celebrated for her undeniably curvy, feminine figure. Experts say the statuette dating back to the Paleolithic era is among the world's oldest depictions of a woman. But exactly what she represents — or who carved her all those thousands of years ago — remains a mystery. Was she a fertility symbol, a lucky charm, a goddess — maybe even a prehistoric piece of pornography? "That's of course an interpretation question," said Walpurga Antl-Weiser, an expert at Vienna's Natural History Museum who has written a book about her, adding that it's hard to know what the humans of that era were thinking. The figurine wasn't made from local materials, and over the years, similar statuettes have been found elsewhere, including France and Russia, Antl-Weiser told The Associated Press. Back then, mammoths, bison and woolly rhinos roamed Willendorf, with humans living in camp communities, according to the Natural History Museum. Modern-day archaeologists found the statuette during an excavation in 1908 and brought her for safekeeping at the Natural History Museum. She made her public debut in 1998. Before Friday's big bash, she'll make a brief homecoming trip back to Willendorf. Starting Saturday, the Venus of Willendorf — along with several "sisters" from Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — will be on display at the Natural History Museum until February. Fact is, the figurine continues to fascinate. Reproductions of the Venus are widely available — as chocolate, marzipan, even as soap. On Friday, Austria's post office will officially unveil a special stamp in her honor. To Antl-Weiser, the interest is easy to explain. "She's very corpulent but still very beautiful," she said. "One gets the feeling she has become an icon."