Venus of Willendorf
Posted on March 28, 2013 by Alex Roach
One thing I love about this class is that through lecture I hear tidbits of facts and information from other classes I have taken before. They are usually not talked about much in this class, which gives me a great opportunity to research more information on them for blog topics. In this section of the class the one thing that stuck out to me that I’ve heard of before is the Venus of Willendorf. I find this statue very interesting because of the way the woman is built is seen as a sign of fertility. It is also called the Woman of Willendorf, and is only 11cm tall. I find the fact that something so small as this to be of great archaeological importance fascinating. It is estimated that it was made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE, but wasn’t found until 1908 by a man named Johann Veran. He found it in during an excavation at a Paleolithic site near Willendorf, a city in lower Austria. The Venus of Willendorf is carved out of oolithic limestone and is tinted with red ochre. This limestone is not a local stone to the area, leaving room for interpretation as to where the stone came from and how it go to they city of Willendorf. There were many other Venus figures found later to match in a set together.