Women in Prehistory: Discussion Topics & Questions

Discussion Topics & Questions

Baring and Cashford
The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image

ISSUES
(Problems in interpretation and identification)

(p. 6) "The statues are nearly always naked, generally small and often pregnant." ["Venus" of Willendorf]
(p. 6) "Some look like ordinary women, but most of them have the look of mothers, as though all that were female in them has been focused on the overwhelming mystery of birth."
(p. 6) "Many figures have been sprinkled with red ochre, the colour of life-giving blood, and frequently they taper to a point without feet, as if they were once fixed upright in the ground for a ritual purposes."

(p. 6) [Venus of Laussel] "...in her right hand a bison's horn, crescent-shaped like the moon, notched with the thirteen days of the waxing moon and the thirteen months of the lunar year."
(p. 6) "With her left hand she points to her swelling womb."
(p. 6) "Her head is tilted towards the crecent moon, drawing a curve of relationship from her fingers on the womb up through the incline of her head to the crescent horn in her hand, so creating a connection between the waxing phase of the moon and the fecundity of the human womb."

(p. 7) [Venus of Lespugue] "Her upper chest is flattened into a curve, rising upwards to an almost serpentine head, which inclines forward, so that all the emphasis of her fragile body falls upon her capacity to give birth and nourishment."
(p. 7) "...her buttocks and thighs are disproportionately swollen, as though also contributing to the act of birth."
(p. 7) "Her breasts and buttocks give the feeling of four great eggs carried in the nest of her pregnant body."
(p. 7f.) "Ten vertical lines have been etched from beneath her buttocks to the back of her knees, giving the impression of the waters of birth falling profusely from the womb, like rain.
(p. 8) "The ten lines are suggestive of the ten lunar months of gestation in the womb."
Questions
(p. 8) "What the grounds for claiming that these sculptures of women are goddesses, not simply the beauties of the local tribe or the girls in the cave next door?"
Discuss

(p. 8) "Because the whole of the body is concentrated on the drama of birth"
Is it?

(p. 8) "If we acknowledge the religious significance of these figures, we cannot then dismiss them in the term 'idols of fertility'."
Discuss

The Cave as the Womb of the Mother Goddess (pp. 15-18)

The Goddess as the Moon pp. 18-22)

The Spiral... (pp. 24-26)

The Animals (pp. 26-32)
The Shaman (pp.32-38) Lascaux
Newgrange

IMAGES OF WOMEN
IN ANCIENT ART
Chris Witcombe
Sweet Briar College