Venus Figurine Variations: The Photos

A couple of months ago I wrote an article on the newly discovered chipped stone versions of Venus figurines recovered from a 14,000-16,000 year old archaeological site in Poland called Wilczyce and reported in Antiquity earlier this year. The paper was fascinating: Venus figurines are known to have been carved in a number of different media, including ivory, bone and stone, but this is the first to be identified in a chipped stone format.

The lead scientist of the research, Romuald Schild of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, was in the field and unable to talk to me at the time the article came out in Antiquity, but he recently reached me and was kind enough to send along some high resolution photographs of the chipped stone figurines, which I have collected in this photo essay.

Here's some more information about the site and the discoveries, in case you missed it:

• Chipped Stone Venus Figurines from Poland, a photo essay
• Venus Figurine Variations: Lalinde/Gönnersdorf Figurines, the article I wrote in March about the paper
• Wilczyce (Poland), a site description
• Venus figurines, a definition of the concept
• Late Magdalenian feminine flint plaquettes from Poland, Jan Fiedorczuk, Bodil Bratlund, Else Kolstrup and Romuald Schild, 2007. Antiquity 81(311):97–105.