The “Venus” Figurines F 513
Current Anthropology Volume 41, Number 4, August±October 2000 q 2000 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2000/4104-0002$3.50 The Venus of Willendorf, then, within her culture and period, rather than within ours, was clearly The ªVenusº richly and elaborately clothed in inference and meaning. She wore the fabric of her culture. She was, in fact, a referential library and a multivalent, Figurines multipurpose symbol. alexander marshack, ªThe Female Imageº Textiles, Basketry, Gender, and Our images of Upper Paleolithic Europe are a curious lot, 1 Status in the Upper Paleolithic abounding with depictions of brave Ice-Age hunters pre- paring for the hunt, stalking and killing megafauna, or celebrating the kill. This is true for written and visual representations alike, which, by omitting from consid- by O. Soffer, J. M. Adovasio, and eration the activities of not only older individuals but D. C. Hyland also women and children, present extremely limited and biased reconstructions of the past. These reconstructions Research on Gravettian textiles and basketry informs our under- 1. The work on this paper took some 18 months. Inspired by our standing of Upper Paleolithic ideology and yields new insights on research on the impressions of textiles, baskets, and nets on frag- one component of Stone Age material cultureÐthe ªVenusº ®gu- ments of ®red clay from Upper Paleolithic Moravia, we turned to rines. Detailed studies of a series of ®gurines indicate the pres- the published literature on the ªVenusº ®gurines to see if the var- ence of at least three types of dressed female depictions.
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