The female form has always borne a clear fascination for artists. Indeed, the female form is synonymous with art of all periods. Consider the Venus de Milo (160 BC – 111 BC), the Mona Lisa (AD 1503), or Picasso’s Nude Woman (AD 1910); each is a celebration of the sensuality and curvaceousness of the female form, but also of the reserved inscrutability of women in the Western imagination. This interest in the female form is one of the oldest trends in art. When our ancestors first decided to depict the human form, some 26,000 years Before Present, it was to the feminine body that they looked. Nude figures, with emphasised organs of generation and nurturing, were produced across Europe and the Near East. Their role is uncertain. The oversized hips, often clearly incised pubic triangles, large breasts, and hourglass figures, have led many archaeologists to suggest that they are ‘fertility figures’, but we may imagine any number of other ritual or social uses for such figures. They may, for example, have been important in childbirth, which was after all a highly dangerous process for women. We can even imagine a scenario in which the pain of a woman undergoing childbirth is transferred to such an object – which are almost exclusively small and tactile – which depicts perhaps the ultimate child-birthing and rearing body, well-prepared for the physical agony a mother must endure. Alternatively, some have proposed that our most ancient ancestors worshipped a monotheistic female deity, the hypothesised ‘Great Goddess’, proposed by the German Classicist Eduard Gerhard in AD 1849. It is doubtful, however, that the concept of a deity, on a separate plane of existence from humankind, existed so early.

This remarkable Anatolian Neolithic ‘Venus’ figure, as these apparent fertility goddesses are called on a poor analogy with the Roman deity of love and beauty, follows many of the usual features of such figures. She has incredibly buxom, oversized hips, narrow legs terminating in conical points, an incised pubic triangle, arms folded under her stylised breasts, and a small round head with no facial features. But what sets this piece apart is the most extraordinary decorative fringe which runs along the crossed arms of the figure. Made up of radiating incised lines, the decoration adds both to the figural scope of the piece, and frames the torso beautifully, acting as a kind of halo around the important nurturing organs (breasts) so vital in early childrearing. The lack of a platform, or even fully-formed legs, on this piece indicates that it was never designed to stand up on its own; it is likely that it was meant to be held during a ritual of some kind, perhaps caressed by women in childbirth, or touched to specific parts of their body. Alternatively, it is possible that such figures were meant to be laid down in votive deposits, and buried or otherwise ritually hidden.

This figure looks ahead to the later Cycladic-style Anatolian figures known as ‘Kilia-style’ or ‘stargazer’ figures, similarly depicting fertile women. These remarkable figures demonstrate a continuity in artistic form and expression from the earliest human artists to our more recent ancestors. The sensuality of the form indicates something of the extraordinary skill of the artist to transform the human image into an abstract, programmatic form that is akin to the works of modern artists like Anthony Gormley, Barbara Hepworth, or Henry Moore. The artistry of these Prehistoric figures is evidence of the complexity of the human mind and spirit even at the earliest times.