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The Female Image: A ‘Time-factored’ Symbol. A Study in Style and Aspects of Image Use in the Upper Palaeolithic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

A. Marshack
A. Marshack
Affiliation:
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
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Extract

The ‘art’ of the early Upper Palaeolithic refers to the images and symbols of the hunters of horse, bison and mammoth during the last European Ice Age that began more than 32,000 years ago. It is therefore interesting that it is not the image of the animal that develops in complexity and variability across Ice Age Europe for the next 20,000 or so years, but the image of the female. The image and the concept of the Ice Age female has perhaps been the subject of more intense emotional debate in the last century than the image of the animal (Ucko 1962; 1969; Clottes and Cerou 1970; LeroiGourhan 1965; Ucko and Rosenfeld 1972; Stoliar 1977–78). The debate continues, both with new finds and new ideas (Rosenfeld 1977; Delporte 1979; Rice 1981; Gamble 1982; Cerda 1983; Guthrie 1984; Praslov 1985; Sonneville-Bordes 1986; Lorblanchet and Welte 1987; Gvozdover 1989; Duhard 1989).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , 1991 , pp. 17 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1991

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