Venus of Doln Vstonice and the Gravettian Culture

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 not the only site on which Gravettian female figurines were found. 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 valued more highly than art for art's sake. This is because of the need for greater human population growth in the stable, permanent settlements that characterized later, Paleolithic cultures.

Yet even before these changes occurred where the Gravettian people merged or were subsumed by others, the Gravettian culture has an "apparently stable and very elaborate economic and social structure," (de Laet 212). Gravettian culture spread throughout Europe, but remained remarkably homogenous with a great degree of "cultural unity," (de Laet 212). There was a distinct Gravettian artistic sensibility, which gave rise to the Venus-type icons in regions as far-reaching as France and the Ukraine (Haynes). However, it is unknown whether the "appearance and spread of Gravettian was a huge migratory movement or merely the diffusion of ideas and technological changes among pre-existing populations," (Haynes 160).

At the Dolni Vestonice site alone, the bones of "at least 150 mammoths" and shelters and structures built with mammoth bones have been found (Haynes 161). More than 2000 clay figurines like the Venus were also found, showing that the creation of art objects was important to the Gravettian people. The admiration of the human form, and most likely the respect for the female, meant that Gravettian statues sometimes took on the appearance of the Venus of Dolni Vestonice. Even if the Venus of Dolni Vestonice does not represent fertility of human beings, she might have represented the spiritual meaning behind fertility: that is, crop abundance and prosperity. As Lysianna states, the Venus of Dolni Vestonice "may depict the earliest portrayal of a deity or Mother Goddess."