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Monday, July 29, 2013

The Ancient Goddess - the Venus of Lespugue

While the Venus of Willendorf is probably the better known of all the ancient "Venus" statuettes that depict mankind's earliest perception of  the Divine, the Venus of Lespugue is another such statuette that has cause great debate amongst the archaeological community as to its "true" purpose and the reasoning behind why such statuettes were created.

Dated to have originated from the Gravettian period (that occurred between 26,000 and 24,000 years ago and formed part of the Upper Paleolithic era), this image that stangd only 15cm tallk) was carved from mammouth ivory and was discovered in the Rideaux cave of Lespugue  (Haute-Garonne) in the foothills of the Pyrenees by René de Saint-Périer in 1922.

According to
Elizabeth Wayland Barber, this statuette was one of the earliest representations of splun thread with the image depicting a "skirt" made from twisted fibre that was frayed at the ends hanging below its hips.  As with the other imagery from the same era, it is the overty exaggerated feminine (or sexual) characteristics, in particular the large pendulous breasts and hips, that one first notices about this statuette.

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