The Venus Figurines

Introduction

What does it all mean? The Venus figurines of the Paleolithic period have left many in archaeology and layperson pondering -- what were they there for? Is it as simple as an early form pornography for Upper Paleolithic man? Are the Venus figurines a part of symbolic ritual, magic,  or a mystical goddess symbols? Or, are the Venus figurines simply the representational symbols for motherhood?
Whatever the answer to the highly debated Venus figurine symbols these symbols are one of the first indicators of ancient peoples lifeways and thought. This paper shall explore peered reviewed articles of Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines and examine the debate of their representations and possible meanings. Furthermore, the paper shall examine these interpretations and how they effected the perception both from an academe and public perceptions and attempt to reconcile the debate.

The Debate

          The debate of the Venus figurines has gone for more than 82 years, George Grant MacCurdy, in an article in the American Anthropologist, in 1924, says that the Venus figurines are a representation of fecundity. He says that the anthropomorphic symboling falls in line to the Upper Paleolithic peoples obsession with fertility that, this is represented in the various cave art forms to the Venus figurines statuettes found. MacCurdy's paper is the beginning of a trend to refer to the characteristics of the statues as “steatopygic” and although his paper is more of a review of the varying examples of types of art in regards to animal fauna for Upper Paleolithic peoples (p 29). MacCurdy also discourses how these relationships are entwined with human imagery and the figurines.

          In a 1976, an article by Robert J. Trotter shows how the Venus figurines are emblematic of motherhood, and that they, Upper Paleolithic peoples, may have been “mother worshipers” (p 106). Trotter's article traces back mother worshiping from various ethnohistories and contemporary ethnographies from around the world. From India to Africa, mother worshiping are a component of a cultural artifacts. Mothers are viewed within these cultures as “nurturing” and as a “life giver.” Robert J.Trotter gives the example of India as being tied to mother worshiping as dating back as far as 5,000 years ago.
          Other archaeologists have speculated that Venus figurines were symboling as a reproductive metaphor for Upper Paleolithic women, or charms to insure that their pregnancy carried to term. However, Sarah M Nelson points out that the Venus figurines may have been enculturally biased via school textbooks. Sharing the same titillating characteristics, the Venus figurines, the buttocks, breasts, and belly, are typically illustrated, or pictured (within these textbooks) as “modal” and as primary features for Upper Paleolithic peoples’ self-representations of their sexuality. These biases, Nelson indicates, are presupposing a false premise that the Venus statuettes are all the same and share the same function. LeRoy Dermott, alternatively, observes the Venus figurines as “ordinary women” views of their own body; therefore representational of the self (p 227). These multiple interpretations have given the Venus figurines a long storied history in how archaeology and social context matters in the discovery of the past.

Discussion

In viewing the past archaeology seeks to reconcile; to bring order; to understand in the machinations of the historical ancestors, and to apply traditions that matters to human narrative of today. Archaeology attempts the find these truths or at the least perceived truths through the shapes and symbols of the present and the past. In archaeology's view, our symbolizing, in how humans interpret, convey, and construct our knowledge to be meaningful that is understood not only to the individual, but to others as well. Archaeology attempts in trying to interpret ancient peoples’ symbols is tenuous at best and impossible at the least. Nevertheless, interpretation of symbols is what archaeologists and humans do and what is needed to be done in order to determine what the ancestors may have meant by the symbols they left behind.

Symbols that are left behind in material culture of the past, and in the context of archaeology, are often perceived as, according to John E. Robb (1998), “wasting our time trying to recover mental phenomena archaeologically” (p 329). Robb further asserts that symbols are “irrelevant,” and are“structured [to] human lives,” and has broken down into two “traditional viewpoints” (ibid): gender archaeology, and agency interpretations. John E. Robb says the following,

Both gender archaeology and agency-centered interpretations have us to confront ancient identities and motivations. Even under the agency theory umbrella, however, there is diversity. Some theorist with ‘Symbols with a Capital S’—pyramids, chiefly insignia, and the obtrusive icons of rank and rituals. Others see every human intervention in material things as a symbolically constructive act (p 330).

In other words, just being human is a symbolic in and of itself. Humans cannot help but be symbolic and the point made by Joan Gero and Jim Mazzullo (1984) about artifacts, when being interpreted and sorted by humans, that they are “intuitively sorted” and are typological, spatially, and temporally “derived distributions of cultural manifestations”; in essence, artifacts (a left behind symbol) are sorted subjectively by the human agent (p 316).

          One of example of subjectivity, in a comment to LeRoy Dermott 1996 paper, “Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurines,” by Alice B Kehoe, takes umbrage to the fact he and his commenter’s had failed to notice to the possible male figurine pendent from Dolni Vestonice. She chastises,

Why can male archaeologists not recognize a straightforward representation of their own genitalia? For that matter, why has a note in the principle international journal for prehistoric archaeology been overlooked? Will this comment register, or are the gentlemen so fixated on female sex objects that their memories blank out any challenge to their objects of desire? (p 665).

Dermott replies to this challenge, by acknowledging her perspective, and then gently slams her interpretations of how the pendent was worn and why the male figurine may have not been male. He explains, “Furthermore, suspension on a string is not the only 'sensible' or 'parsimonious' use for their perforations … I saw no sign of polish in the perforations of the originals to indicate how they were actually worn (ibid)…” Demott later indicates that they could have been sewn on since the technology was available to the Upper Paleolithic peoples at that time. He lets the science indicate the possible interpretation, instead of imparting a subjective motive of his own. His 1996 paper, does however, impart some interpretation, but the logistics of viewing the female figurines as self expression is a lot more prudent.

              In another 1996 paper by McDermott along with fellow author Catherine Hodge McCoid, explain how the “female vision” of the self, explains the out of proportion anatomy of the Venus figurines by detailing through illustrations and of pictures of modern women viewing their bodies from over the shoulder, under their arm, or looking down their torso. They also speculate that is possible that the Venus figurines were functional, they say “Perhaps the figurines served as obstetrical aids, the relatives sizes of the abdomens helping women to calculate the pregnancies” (p 323).

However, there is the perspective of Robert J Trotter (1976), that the Venus figurines were possible mother goddess symbols. He alludes to this through the use of an ethnohistory and ethnography of the Indians, for instance, how their belief in Chandi goddess in Orissa in eastern India helped adapt to the transform of their culture into modernity and adjust social change that went along with it (p 106). By using the modern examples of the mother goddess symbols, Trotter tries to correlate how the Venus figurines may have been used by ancient peoples.

Diane Bolger conveys the stories of the Venus figurines as the erotica or fertility symbols for the Upper Paleolithic man. These interpretations have lasted since their discovery, often based on out of context, both spatially and temporally, “fragmentary” evidence. This fragmentation, however, has been parlayed into college textbooks and popular media; frequently providing with imagery of exaggerated sexuality (p 366). This has also been true for later period figurine pieces, in that, they have been explicated as the symboling for pregnancy.

In Bolger’s discourse of the Venus figurines, she explains the difficulty of finding a proper contextual and critical theory. She says that this has prevented the Venus figurines and later figurines discoveries “from developing socially based interpretative models” (ibid). A recent discovery of a figurine in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Cyprus has reset the talk of what their purpose were; at least for the Cyprus site. She connects the figurine with marked changes of the period, socio-economically and materially. She says of the Chalcolithic figurines,

The vague, generic image of a ‘mother goddess’ embodying all aspects of ‘fertility’ from sexuality and fecundity to procreation, motherhood, and life in general may be contested on theoretical grounds as subjective, undifferentiated, ahistorical, and gender-biased, much in the same way as have the Upper Paleolithic ‘Venuses’ (Conkey 1991, Nelson 1993) (p 366)…

In essence, there seems to be a broad theme within archaeological circles, that figurines are stuck in their stereotypes initially assigned to them. Diane Bolger’s work, in spite of this, focuses on the figurines contextual and spatio-temporal finds at the Chalcolithic site.

The Chalcolithic figurines are described by Bolger as being parturient females, one is sitting on a stool giving birth, she says of the evidence,

            In summing up all of the above evidence, attention must be paid to the wide range of symbolic images represented in Chalcolithic assemblages of figurines and cruciform pendants. They are manufactured in a variety of media, and although figurines made of stone are more schematic than those of clay, virtually no two are identical. The self-supporting types demonstrate a variety of postures from standing cruciforms to squatting or seated examples (p 368)…

This summation above is provided as a way to foster the examples of figurines variety. The assumption of the lifeways of the Upper Paleolithic people had been, for the most part, the imagery of “mighty hunter” while the women foraged (p 1203). In a Science by Heather Pringle, challenges that image. In comparing two sites from Gravettian: Pavlov and Dolni Vestinoce, Olga Soffer, and James Adovasio proffer that these ancient peoples may have been “expert net weavers” for hunting, they said “This is not the image we’ve had of Upper Paleolithic macho guys out killing animals up close and personal with spears and stone points’ (p 1203). The article continues that they believe that these sites were “highly occupied” during winter and revealed, according to the article author, “many traces of Paleolithic ceremony, including clay Venus and animal figurines that appeared to have been ritually destroyed” (ibid). Implied also within the article are two interesting factors: the implicit lifeways of women in Upper Paleolithic may have been weavers and contributors to the hunt, and the other factor that the Venus and animal figurines may have been used for “hunting magic."

But not all scholars believe in hunting magic, Patricia C. Rice thinks that the Venus figurines allocation to the “glorification” as female fertility symbols is misplaced. In her 1981 article, “Prehistoric Venuses: Symbols of Motherhood Womanhood” she explicates that the a priori presumptions of the Venus figurines, but also recounts the exception to the rules. Students of archaeology who did not accept the a priori explanations of the Venuses fertility positioning, say they could have been “art for art sake,” or that they may have been “magic guardians” (p 402). However, Rice does give three possible explanation of why the public images of the Venus figurines have been serialized, stereotyped, and linked to fertility, she says,

First, most analyses have used only a small sample of the extant figurines, specifically the Venuses shown in prehistoric art books, which more often than not appear to be pregnant. A cursory look at the entire collection of 188 Venuses call into question the dominant focus on fertility; most figurines simply do not appear to be pregnant. . Second, the use of the name “Venus” to refer to prehistoric female statuettes may have conditioned the perceptions of prehistorians in the direction of an exclusive fertility function. Third, modern humans may be blinded by an assumption that the ability to give life must have been regarded as sacred, and that the Venuses were therefore sculpted to honor that sacredness (p 402-3)….

Thus, this treatise of characteristics, of the Venuses, indoctrinated not only the public viewing but the academe perspective as well. Rice surveys the extant figurines and does a comparative analysis on them. Trying to determine whether the existing paradigms of the Venuses are valid or not. She does a body comparison on their attributes to determine whether these symbolic of fertility or representational of womanhood. Her analysis concludes the latter.

Wrapping Thoughts Up

The debate of the Venus figurines has primarily surrounded around fertility, whether it was from the perspective of pregnancy, mother goddess cults, or that of womanhood. These ideas are related to status, power, and gender, in which, these social constructs are inherently transmitted from a cultural bias point of view. In another paper, Power and Inequality: A Gender Perspective, by Gregory Stewart, discusses the relationship of gender objectivity versus the empiricism of science. This relationship in terms of the Western construct breaks down into the interpretation of the data, in so being that, ancient peoples lifeways, in proportion to their daily lives are examined in terms of the symbols and representations.

          In the perspective of the Venus figurines this symboling has been interred into folklore, popular culture, and academic dogma. In essence, the Venus figurines have been objectified, even reified to a point of certainty, in which cultural bias of gender has obscured any empiric data. In looking at the Venuses within their context, and out of context, their representation has been limited to the cultural roles of gender. Even with feminization of archaeology the Venuses have been strapped into the role of femininity in regards to their sex and sexuality.

          Moreover, the academic certitude that the Venuses are related to fertility has decompressed the other possible representations. Furthermore, the Venuses stigma of fertility was set upon by the misguided perception that primitive peoples thought was restrictive, uncomplicated, and simple. In essence, any thought of complex cognitive thought would be beyond that of the Upper Paleolithic peoples. In the view of Sarah M Nelson, the textualization of the Venus figurines, in the terms of their gender, and the deconstruction of introduction to archaeological knowledge, has comported it to fertility. She proffers that the variability of the Venuses “provides diversity and possible interpretations” (p 11). In this, Nelsons says that “failure to acknowledge the variability makes it easier to produce sweeping generalizations about their probable meaning and function” (p 14). These functions and interpretations of the Venus figurines have proffered a mythological ontology. In terms of conflicting viewpoints, and conflating narratives the Venus figurines have become textualized in the context that has been limited by hegemonic biases and beliefs of archaeology. These beliefs have subverted the knowledge of variability in terms of ancient peoples’ pathways and lifeways, the Venuses are the symbols, in which, the culture they left behind are tenuously interpreted both by archaeologists and laypersons.

Bibliography

Bolger, Diane

1996 Figurines, Fertility, and the Emergence of Complex Society in Prehistoric Cyprus, Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 2, (Apr., 1996), pp. 365-373.

Gero, Joan & Mazzullo, Jim

1984 Analysis of Artifact Shape Using Fourier Series in Closed Form, Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 11, No. 3. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 315-322.

MacCurdy, George Grant

1924 The Field of Paleolithic Art, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 26. No. 1 (Jan. –Mar., 1924), pp. 27-49.

McCoid Catherine Hodge, & McDermott, LeRoy

1996 Toward Decolonizing Gender: Female Vision in the Upper Paleolithic, American Anthropology, Vol. 98, No. 2, (1996), pp. 319-326.

McDermott, LeRoy

1996 Self-Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female Figurine, Current Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 2, (Apr., 1996), pp. 227-275.

Nelson, Sarah M.

n. d. Diversity of the Upper Paleolithic “Venus” Figurines and Archaeological Mythology, (on file, University of Denver)

Pringle, Heather

1997 Ice Age Communities May Be Earliest Known Net Hunters, Science, New Series, Vol. 277, No. 5333, (Aug. 29, 1997), pp. 1203-1204.

Robb, John E.

1998 The Archaeology of Symbols, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 27. (1998), pp. 329-346.

Trotter, Robert J.

1976 God: She’s Alive and Well, Science News, Vol. 109, No. 7, (Feb. 14, 1976), pp. 106-107+110.