Venus of Dolní Věstonice: One of the Oldest Ceramic Figures

The Venus of Dolní Věstonice is a small figurine of a woman made of fired clay, found on 13 July 1925 at an Ice Age site in South Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. Dating from roughly 31,000 to 29,000 years ago, it is one of the oldest known ceramic objects in the world. Together with the remarkable burials and dwellings found nearby, it has made Dolní Věstonice one of the key sites for understanding Europe’s Ice Age mammoth hunters.

Background: the mammoth hunters of Moravia

Dolní Věstonice lies at the foot of the Pavlov Hills, a limestone ridge overlooking the Dyje River in South Moravia. During the last glacial period this was a corridor between the Alps and the Carpathians, through which herds of mammoths, horses and reindeer moved across a cold, open landscape.

From about 31,000 to 25,000 years ago, groups of people camped repeatedly here and at the nearby site of Pavlov. Archaeologists call their culture the Pavlovian, a regional form of the Gravettian, which spread across much of Europe. These people hunted mammoths and other game and used mammoth bones and tusks as building material and fuel.

Excavations at Dolní Věstonice began in 1924 under the Moravian archaeologist Karel Absolon. Later campaigns, especially those of Bohuslav Klíma from the late 1940s onwards, uncovered hearths, remains of huts, burials and many thousands of artefacts.

The discovery of the figurine

The Venus was found on 13 July 1925 in a layer of ash near a large hearth, during excavations directed by Absolon. It lay in two pieces, broken across the middle.

The figurine is 111 millimetres tall and about 43 millimetres wide. It shows a woman with heavy, pendulous breasts, a broad belly and wide hips, a form shared with other Gravettian “Venus” figurines across Europe. The face is reduced to two slanted slits for the eyes, without mouth or nose. Four holes on top of the head may once have held feathers, flowers or other decorations, though this is uncertain. The legs end without feet.

A ceramic object from the Ice Age

The Venus is made of fired clay, prepared from loess, a fine silt deposited by the wind that covered much of the region. Early researchers suggested that the material was mixed with powdered bone, but later analysis indicated that it consists essentially of local loess with natural inclusions.

Dolní Věstonice and nearby Pavlov produced thousands of fired clay fragments, including small figurines of animals such as bears, lions, mammoths, horses, foxes, rhinoceroses and owls. Archaeologists found remains of oven-like hearths where these were fired.

Deliberately exploded figures?

Many of the clay figures are broken in ways that suggest they shattered in the fire. In 1989 Pamela Vandiver, Olga Soffer and colleagues published a study in the journal Science proposing that some figures were placed in the fire while still wet, so that they would crack or explode from thermal shock. They suggested that the breaking itself may have been the purpose, perhaps as part of a ritual or performance.

This interpretation is debated. The Venus itself survived firing more or less intact. What is clear is that people at Dolní Věstonice were experimenting with ceramic technology roughly 10,000 years before the oldest known pottery vessels, which come from East Asia around 20,000 years ago. They do not seem to have used fired clay for containers at all.

A child’s fingerprint

In the early 2000s researchers studied the Venus with high-resolution computed tomography and other imaging. They identified a fingerprint pressed into the clay before firing. Its ridge spacing suggested that it belonged to a child, roughly between about 7 and 15 years old. This does not prove that a child made the figurine, since the print may come from someone who handled it, but it offers a rare personal trace of an Ice Age individual.

The settlement and its finds

Dolní Věstonice was not just a place of art. Excavators found the remains of several dwellings, outlined by post holes, stones and large mammoth bones, with hearths inside. A large deposit of mammoth bones at the edge of the settlement has been interpreted as a dump or a store of building material and fuel, since wood was scarce on the open steppe.

The people of the site made stone tools, bone and ivory implements, and ornaments from pierced teeth and shells, some of which had travelled long distances. Among the ivory carvings are stylised female figures reduced to a rod with breasts, and engraved pieces with geometric patterns.

Clay fragments from Dolní Věstonice and Pavlov also preserve impressions of woven materials. In the 1990s James Adovasio, Olga Soffer and Bohuslav Klíma identified these as traces of textiles, cordage, netting or basketry. They are among the earliest known evidence of weaving, a technology that rarely survives because plant fibres decay.

The burials of Dolní Věstonice

The site is also famous for its burials. In 1949 Klíma excavated the grave of a woman, known as DV 3, aged around 40. She lay under two mammoth shoulder blades and was sprinkled with red ochre. Her skull showed asymmetry of the face, and some researchers have linked her to a small ivory head with a lopsided face found at the site. The connection is possible but cannot be proven.

In 1986 an extraordinary triple burial was uncovered at Dolní Věstonice II. Three young individuals, aged roughly 16 to 20, lay side by side, their heads covered with ochre and adorned with pierced teeth and ivory pendants. The central skeleton, known as DV 15, had skeletal abnormalities and its sex has been debated. The arrangement of the bodies, with one person’s hand resting on another’s pelvis, has prompted many interpretations, none of them certain.

These burials are broadly comparable with others of the period across Europe, such as those at Sungir in Russia, and show that Gravettian groups buried some of their dead with care and ceremony.

Meaning of the Venus figurines

The term “Venus” was applied to Palaeolithic female figurines by nineteenth-century scholars, by analogy with the Roman goddess of love. It does not mean that these objects were thought to represent a goddess.

Their meaning is still debated. Suggestions include fertility symbols, images of real women, protective charms, or symbols of shared identity among widely scattered groups. The Dolní Věstonice figure belongs to the same broad tradition as the Venus of Willendorf in Austria and earlier carvings such as the Venus of Hohle Fels, but it is unusual for being made of clay rather than stone or ivory.

Timeline

• c. 31,000–29,000 years ago: The figurine is made and fired at Dolní Věstonice.
• 1924: Karel Absolon begins excavations at the site.
• 1925, 13 July: The Venus is found in two pieces in a layer of ash.
• 1949: Bohuslav Klíma excavates the burial of the woman known as DV 3.
• 1986: The triple burial is discovered at Dolní Věstonice II.
• 1989: Vandiver and colleagues publish their study on the origins of ceramic technology at the site.
• Early 2000s: Imaging studies identify a child’s fingerprint on the figurine.

Why it matters

The Venus of Dolní Věstonice shows that Ice Age people understood how to turn clay into a durable material through fire, long before pottery was invented. Its site has also produced some of Europe’s most informative Palaeolithic burials and dwellings. Small as it is, the figurine is one of the most important artefacts of the European Upper Palaeolithic.