7,000 year old Goddess figurine discovered in Italy
Stone Age Female Statue Unearthed
Neolithic figurine largest ever found in Italy (ANSA) - Rome, September 11 - Archaeologists have unearthed the largest Neolithic female figurine ever found in Italy, according to a press report.
The 7,000-year-old stone statuette, discovered during excavations of a burial site near the northern Italian city of Parma, is over 20 centimetres tall, the archaeological monthly Archeo reported.
It depicts a woman with an oval face, slit eyes, a prominent nose and long hair. Her arms are bent at her elbows, sticking out at right-angles to her body.
Although such statuettes are fairly common, it is rare to find figurines this old in Europe, and the majority represent a mother earth divinity with a swelling belly symbolizing fertility.
Archaeologists have instead linked this female to the goddess of death and rebirth, who is usually represented as slender, with a large, beak-like nose and rigid posture.
In addition to these characteristics, this statuette has a small triangle similar to an excision between her breasts. The lower half of her body is much larger, with no distinction between her feet and her legs.
Her back is perfectly vertical, leading experts to conclude that she was probably originally carved to sit on a some kind of throne or support made of a material that has disintegrated over the centuries, such as wood.
The figure was unearthed in a tomb that is part of a larger Neolithic burial site outside Vicofertile, a town around 10km southwest of Parma.
The grave, which belonged to a middle-aged woman, contained a number of pottery bowls in addition to the statuette, which was placed in front of the deceased's head on top of her raised left arm.
The burial site dates back to a period in northern Italian history known as the "square-mouthed pottery" era, corresponding to between 5,000 and 4,300 BC.
Neither the containers nor the statuette in the grave were properly fired, suggesting the items were not in everyday use prior to the burial .
The statuette joins a list of important female figures dug up across Europe, which archaeologists believe indicate some of the earliest concepts of divinities.
The first such figures date back to the 9th millennium BC and were found in the Near East. They then spread across the area that is now eastern Turkey and gradually through the Mediterranean, to Crete, the Cyclades Islands, Malta and Sardinia, before moving up through mainland Europe.
J.Hy sez: Across many millennia we see movement of peoples and cultures from Asia Minor to Italy. Sicily along with Malta was a site of Neolithic Goddess culture known from sites like Ġgantija... but the Vicofertile Goddess is about 1,000 years older. She is nearly contemporaneous with late Çatalhöyük: the latest date of habitation at Çatalhöyük is 7,700 years old. Just as in semi-historical times, when the Sea Peoples disrupted Asia Minor and some Anatolian peoples emigrated to Italy and Sicily in the late Bronze Age... I wonder if the end of Çatalhöyük culture similarly dispersed Anatolians westward, bringing the religion of the Great Mother with them. Images of a Bird-beaked Death Mother can be traced back to religious imagery at Çatalhöyük.
"Some 5,000-6,000 years before the age of Classical Greece, the people of the Neolithic developed the mythic imagery of the Paleolithic era into a vital cultural matrix which became the foundation of the great cultures of the Bronze Age. It is as if the goddess imagery first formulated in the Paleolithic era becomes a cultural unity in the Neolithic. What is amazing is that the same ritual structures and images of the goddess are found as far apart as Britain and Malta, Malta and Old Europe, Old Europe and Anatolia, Anatolia and the immense territory between Syria and the Indus Valley."
--Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, p. 103-104
OK, now include Italy along with Malta and Old Europe.
Neolithic figurine largest ever found in Italy (ANSA) - Rome, September 11 - Archaeologists have unearthed the largest Neolithic female figurine ever found in Italy, according to a press report.
The 7,000-year-old stone statuette, discovered during excavations of a burial site near the northern Italian city of Parma, is over 20 centimetres tall, the archaeological monthly Archeo reported.
It depicts a woman with an oval face, slit eyes, a prominent nose and long hair. Her arms are bent at her elbows, sticking out at right-angles to her body.
Although such statuettes are fairly common, it is rare to find figurines this old in Europe, and the majority represent a mother earth divinity with a swelling belly symbolizing fertility.
Archaeologists have instead linked this female to the goddess of death and rebirth, who is usually represented as slender, with a large, beak-like nose and rigid posture.
In addition to these characteristics, this statuette has a small triangle similar to an excision between her breasts. The lower half of her body is much larger, with no distinction between her feet and her legs.
Her back is perfectly vertical, leading experts to conclude that she was probably originally carved to sit on a some kind of throne or support made of a material that has disintegrated over the centuries, such as wood.
The figure was unearthed in a tomb that is part of a larger Neolithic burial site outside Vicofertile, a town around 10km southwest of Parma.
The grave, which belonged to a middle-aged woman, contained a number of pottery bowls in addition to the statuette, which was placed in front of the deceased's head on top of her raised left arm.
The burial site dates back to a period in northern Italian history known as the "square-mouthed pottery" era, corresponding to between 5,000 and 4,300 BC.
Neither the containers nor the statuette in the grave were properly fired, suggesting the items were not in everyday use prior to the burial .
The statuette joins a list of important female figures dug up across Europe, which archaeologists believe indicate some of the earliest concepts of divinities.
The first such figures date back to the 9th millennium BC and were found in the Near East. They then spread across the area that is now eastern Turkey and gradually through the Mediterranean, to Crete, the Cyclades Islands, Malta and Sardinia, before moving up through mainland Europe.
J.Hy sez: Across many millennia we see movement of peoples and cultures from Asia Minor to Italy. Sicily along with Malta was a site of Neolithic Goddess culture known from sites like Ġgantija... but the Vicofertile Goddess is about 1,000 years older. She is nearly contemporaneous with late Çatalhöyük: the latest date of habitation at Çatalhöyük is 7,700 years old. Just as in semi-historical times, when the Sea Peoples disrupted Asia Minor and some Anatolian peoples emigrated to Italy and Sicily in the late Bronze Age... I wonder if the end of Çatalhöyük culture similarly dispersed Anatolians westward, bringing the religion of the Great Mother with them. Images of a Bird-beaked Death Mother can be traced back to religious imagery at Çatalhöyük.
"Some 5,000-6,000 years before the age of Classical Greece, the people of the Neolithic developed the mythic imagery of the Paleolithic era into a vital cultural matrix which became the foundation of the great cultures of the Bronze Age. It is as if the goddess imagery first formulated in the Paleolithic era becomes a cultural unity in the Neolithic. What is amazing is that the same ritual structures and images of the goddess are found as far apart as Britain and Malta, Malta and Old Europe, Old Europe and Anatolia, Anatolia and the immense territory between Syria and the Indus Valley."
--Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, p. 103-104
OK, now include Italy along with Malta and Old Europe.