Palaeolithic venus figurines Research Papers (original) (raw)

In French, as in most Latin languages and in English, the same word designates both the human being and the adult male of the human species: homme, man... This ambiguous designation, which in a way makes the human adult male a universal model, has been, until recently, amplified by the tendency to study human societies, past or contemporary, essentially from the male point of view, and to present them through male models, objects and discourse. Finally, sociology and ethnology were for a very long time the almost exclusive preserve of men.
Prehistoric science is no exception to this biased vision: we talk about prehistoric men, cavemen, Palaeolithic hunters, etc., and prehistoric women appear strangely absent in all the works, except for the few monographs, articles or chapters devoted to their representations in prehistoric art.
The aim of this exhibition is to draw up an objective assessment of our current knowledge of prehistoric women: as visitors will see for themselves, this assessment is sometimes rather meagre, due to the relatively recent interest shown by researchers in this particular theme. If all the data collected by prehistorians over the last century had been collected in this spirit, the results would probably be much richer.
In the absence of texts - we are talking about prehistory here - the only sources of information available on prehistoric women are their bone remains, which tell us about certain aspects of their physique, their burials, which lift part of the veil covering their social position and their "clothing" habits, and, last but not least, the image of femininity as transmitted to us through prehistoric art.
This exhibition, created in 1991, presents an exceptional collection of more than 100 statuettes and engraved blocks, dating from between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago, from the greatest museums in Europe. In addition, there are casts of fossil women's bones, ornaments, and information provided by ethnographic comparisons with more or less modern populations living according to the same economic mode, i.e. hunting, fishing and gathering.
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In French, as in most Latin languages and in English, the same word designates both the human being and the adult male of the human species: homme, man... This ambiguous designation, which in a way makes the human adult male a universal model, has been, until recently, amplified by the tendency to study human societies, past or contemporary, essentially from the male point of view, and to present them through male models, objects and discourse. Finally, sociology and ethnology were for a very long time the almost exclusive preserve of men.

Prehistoric science is no exception to this biased vision: we talk about prehistoric men, cavemen, Palaeolithic hunters, etc., and prehistoric women appear strangely absent in all the works, except for the few monographs, articles or chapters devoted to their representations in prehistoric art.

The aim of this exhibition is to draw up an objective assessment of our current knowledge of prehistoric women: as visitors will see for themselves, this assessment is sometimes rather meagre, due to the relatively recent interest shown by researchers in this particular theme. If all the data collected by prehistorians over the last century had been collected in this spirit, the results would probably be much richer.

In the absence of texts - we are talking about prehistory here - the only sources of information available on prehistoric women are their bone remains, which tell us about certain aspects of their physique, their burials, which lift part of the veil covering their social position and their "clothing" habits, and, last but not least, the image of femininity as transmitted to us through prehistoric art.

This exhibition, created in 1991, presents an exceptional collection of more than 100 statuettes and engraved blocks, dating from between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago, from the greatest museums in Europe. In addition, there are casts of fossil women's bones, ornaments, and information provided by ethnographic comparisons with more or less modern populations living according to the same economic mode, i.e. hunting, fishing and gathering.
"La femme est l’avenir de l’homme" wrote Louis Aragon. She is also its past, not to mention the present...