Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T04:29:40.867Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Cherchez la femme—a Palaeolithic preoccupation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

N. James*
Affiliation:
Division of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, UK

Abstract

The cave paintings in France and Spain are the Magdalenian’s most famous feature. The exhibition, Mille et une femmes de la fin des temps glaciaires (“1001 women from the end of the Ice Age”) explored the proposition that, more than just an archaeological culture, the Magdalenian was inspired, through most of its history, by common symbolism across the Great European Plain all the way from the Pyrenees to Poland; and that, although the landscape varied, this vast region was integrated by common techniques and imagery from 20 000 to 15 000 years ago. The “Lalinde-G¨onnersdorf style” figurines of women, was the suggestion, were particularly characteristic. Assembled from some 20 collections in France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, the exhibition was shown at the Museum of Prehistory in Les Eyzies from June to September last year. The compact presentation was in two parts.

Type
Research article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Airvaux, J., Aujoulat, N., Bonnet-Jacquement, P., Bosinski, G., Cleyet-Merle, J.-J., Delpech, F., Feruglio, V., Paillet, P., Schild, R., Sentis, J., Texier, J.-P., Valentin, B. & Welté, A.-C.. 2011. Mille et une femmes de la fin des temps glaciaires. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux.Google Scholar
Conkey, M. W. 1991. Contexts of action, contexts for power: material culture and gender in the Magdalenian, in Gero, J. M. & Conkey, M. W. (ed.) Engendering archaeology: women and prehistory: 5792. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fiedorczuk, J., Bratlund, B., Kolstrup, E. & Schild, R.. 2007. Late Magdalenian feminine flint plaquettes from Poland. Antiquity 81: 97105.Google Scholar