Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11.1 cm (4.4 inch) tall statuette of a female figure. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems. The statuette is made of a kind of limestone that can not be found in the area. It is colored with red ochre.
The figure is believed to have been carved during the European Upper Paleolithic, or "Old Stone Age", a period of prehistory starting around 30,000 BCE. A wide variety of dates have been proposed. Following a revised analysis of the stratigraphy of the site where the statuette was discovered, carried out in 1990, the figure was estimated to have been carved between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. More recent estimates push the date back slightly to between about 28,000 and 25,000 BCE. In a 2009 reexamination of the stratigraphy at the site, researchers estimated that the age of the archaeological layer in which the figurine was found is about 30,000 years before our time.
Every trope this figurine displays makes it Older Than Dirt.
She is the best known of a larger genre of "Venus figurines"
found across Eurasia, dating to the Upper Paleolithic.
The Venus of Willendorf figurine herself provides examples of:
- The Blank: She doesn't have a visible face. Her head is covered in tiny bumps that might be interpreted as plaited hair hanging in her face or an elaborate headdress — making her The Faceless instead. Or maybe it's just Artistic License.
- Noodle People: Despite her otherwise voluptuous body, her arms, folded over the tops of her breasts, are disproportionately thin.
The discourse around her provides examples of:
- National Geographic Nudity: The statuette is one of the most famous archeological sculptures in human history. Both her bulbous breasts and vulva are very prominent.
- Non-Indicative Name: Whatever the figurine's name might have been, it wasn't recorded and is now impossible to know. Her assigned name, however, plays this trope straight: the statue isn't of the Roman goddess Venus — it pre-dates Roman culture by tens of thousands of years. The name implies she's some sort of Venus-like Love Goddess, but we don't actually know if that's the case. Some scholars reject this terminology, instead referring to the statuette as the "Woman [of/from] Willendorf".
- Stock Unsolved Mysteries: What was the figurine's significance? Why was it carved? We'll never know. So little is known about culture during the Paleolithic that interpretations are Wild Mass Guessing and ususally says more about the person positing it than it does about the Paleolithic. Theories include:
- Mother Goddess: She represents fertility. Her prominent breasts and vulva is a trait seen in later fertility goddesses, and could indicate that she's excellent at birthing and feeding children. Her weight too could have a fertile meaning — pregnancy and breastfeeding are hungry work, and in a time when food is not a stable resource, having enough extra calories stored away to comfortably grow a kid is important.
- Love Goddess: Not mutually exclusive to the previous theory, but with a slightly different focus, is the idea that she represents sexuality. She's an incredibly hefty woman, and her ample breasts and chubby complexion may be seen as not just motherly, but attractive and sexy — a Big Beautiful Woman.
- Protective Charm: Within either religious interpretation, she could be a protective talisman. She appears to have been meant to be carried around: she's only 11.1 cm (4.4 in) tall, was created by a nomadic culture, and is carved from a stone not local to Willendorf.
- Pornography: She could be seen as sexy without being a goddess. Perhaps it's The Rule of First Adopters applied to the medium of stone carving.
- (Self-)portrait: The most distinct of the theories is the idea that she's a portrait of a real person. Being a self-portrait would explain why she doesn't have a face — the artist couldn't see her own face as reference without a mirror, but she could look down at the rest of her body.
- The X of Y: The figurine's modern name: a "Venus" (referring to possibly being a Love or Mother Goddess) which was found at Willendorf. It's alternative name, "Woman [of/from] Willendorf", keeps the same pattern.
