Venus of Willendorf
Venus of Willendorf or Woman of Willendorf, is an 11.1 cm (4.4 inches) high statuette of a woman or woman-like thing. Someone carved it in prehistoric times, perhaps 30,000 years ago. Archaeologist Josef Szombathy found it in 1908 near Willendorf. The statuette is made of a kind of limestone called oolite. There is no oolite near Willendorf, so scientists think someone carried the stone a very long way. The statue is colored with red ochre.[1][2][3][4] Willendorf is a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems.
A study from 1990 said the statue was made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. Scientists think someone in the Gravettian culture carved it using flint tools. A study from 2022 said that the oolite in the statue matched oolite from northern Italy, which means someone must have carried the stone over or around the Alps and Danube river.[4]
Venus of Willendorf is part of the collection of the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna[1] Archived 2004-04-03 at the Wayback Machine.
Since 1908, archaeologists have found many more statuettes of fat women, like the Venus, so they are called Venus figurines too.[source?]
References
[change | change source]- ↑ Alex Greenberger (March 1, 2022). "Venus of Willendorf's Origins Are Traced Back to Italy, Solving Longstanding Archaeological Mystery". ArtNews.
- ↑ Mindy Weisberger (March 1, 2022). "Voluptuous 'Venus' of the Ice Age originated in Italy". Live Science.
- ↑ University of Vienna (February 28, 2022). "Mystery solved about the origin of the 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf" (Press release). Eurekalert.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Gerhard W. Weber, Alexander Lukeneder, Mathias Harzhauser, Philipp Mitteroecker, Lisa Wurm, Lisa-Maria Hollaus, Sarah Kainz, Fabian Haack, Walpurga Antl-Weiser & Anton Kern (February 28, 2022). "The microstructure and the origin of the Venus from Willendorf". Scientific Reports. 12 (1): 2926. doi:10.1038/s41598-022-06799-z. PMC 8885675. PMID 35228605.
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Other websites
[change | change source]
- Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, "Women in Prehistory:Venus of Willendorf" Archived 2004-04-03 at the Wayback Machine.
- The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the True Roles of Women in Prehistory by J.M. Adovasio, Olga Soffer and Jake Page, ISBN 978-0-06-117091-1, gives a new 'view' of headdress as possible model for weaving a basket; Laura Miller review at Salon.com: [2] Archived 2008-06-12 at the Wayback Machine
