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Archaeology
Although named after La Gravette in the Dordogne in France, the Gravettian culture was largely focused in Central Europe (Lysianassa). The Gravettian culture probably migrated there from the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Balkans ("History of Europe" 2). The Gravettian culture is generally believed to be a subset of the larger group called the Aurignacian, and portable items like figurines and tools figured prominently among the people. Their frequent and large-scale migratory patterns show that portable figurines like the Venus of Dolni Vestonice were important objects to the Gravettian culture.
In general, the Gravettian culture "represents subsistence innovations, burial customs, landscape organization, the beginnings of art, projectile technology and other non-utilitarian elements of human behavior, (Lysianassa). In addition to small ceramic objects like the Venus of Dolni Vestonice, the Gravettian people produced cave paintings and other decorative arts. Lienard notes that the Gravettian people were "seriously producing art objects," which had no utilitarian purpose or even a ritualistic or religious one. The Dolni Vestonice statue is most likely indicative of "an aesthetic ideal" that was a product of a natural "artistic impulse." The Venus of Dolni Vestonice has exaggerated sexual features but this is not a fertility object. Like other Gravettian works of art depicting females, the Venus of Dolni Vestonice represents art for art's sake. As de Laet points out, "the most spectacular feature of the Gravettian culture is without question its artistic creations," (212). Dolni Vestonice is...
Females with "adipose" and "stereotyped" features like big hips, breasts, and bottoms were common throughout areas with evidence of Gravettian settlements.
There is a highly practical explanation for why the Venus of Dolni Vestonice is not a ritual fertility object: that is, the Gravettian people were nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers. Their survival depended on maintaining relatively small populations, and they would not have tried to expand their population size ritualistically or otherwise (Lienard). The size of the statue testifies to the Gravettian impulse to make objects that were attractive as well as portable. Portable art objects from the Gravettian and Upper Paleolithic are known as "mobiliary art," (Lysianassa).
Moreover, the images of women collectively called "Venus" statues are usually not found alone. If they were, it might suggest that they were used in some sort of ritual. But the statues are usually unearthed near to other statues that are of various animals including "rhinoceros, mammoth, and feline," (de Laet 212). Art objects and statues made with the bones of animals are also commonly found on Gravettian excavated sites (Haynes). Collectively, the statues could have been used in some form of spiritual practice but there is no evidence to suggest so, or especially to suggest that Gravettian religion was based purely on the fertility of human females. Later on, when "profound climatic change" forced the Gravettian people to intermix with other cultures, it is possible that fertility rite objects were…
Works Cited
De Laet, Sigfried J. History of Humanity: Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization. Taylor & Francis, 1994.
Haynes, Gary. The Early Settlement of North America. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
"History of Europe." Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved online: http://books.google.com/books?id=Kiug84qYTaYC&pg=PA2&dq=gravettian+culture&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nDuHT7akBI-s8QTms9S0CA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=gravettian%20culture&f=false
Lienard, John H. "The Dolni Vestonice Ceramics." Engines of Our Ingenuity. Retrieved online: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi359.htm
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