Plant-Female Iconography j 7373 73
Figure 4.2A,B illustrate plant- like designs incised on the abdomens of female figurines.
In Figure 4.2A, the putative plant appears to be sprouting from the vulva area, whereas the
figurine in Figure 4.2B has what appears to be an inverted plant inscribed on the belly, with
the flower bud positioned in region of the vulva.^18
The “dot and lozenge motif ” was proposed as a possible symbolic representation of a seed
by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, with the dot representing the seed and the diamond-
shaped border representing the sown field. The symbol is sometimes incised or painted on
the belly of female figurines, with the dot also serving as the navel. Figures 4.3A,B show
two examples from Yugoslavia, a stylized female torso with a dot and lozenge design on the
abdomen and a standing female figurine with four dot and lozenge designs on her belly.
Figure 4.3C shows a figurine of a seated pregnant female from Bulgaria with a dot and
lozenge design on her swollen belly. If Gimbutas’s interpretation is correct, the location of a
symbolic seed on the women’s belly would be consistent with a symbolic association of seeds
with generation, lineage, and agricultural abundance.
As we discussed in Chapter 3, numerous female figurines with “coffee- bean eyes” were
found at the Neolithic settlement of Sha’ar Hagolan in the Levant dating to about 6000
bce. Like coffee beans, cereal grains also have a distinctive furrow, or pigmented groove,
that runs longitudinally down the ventral side of each grain, and we proposed that the eyes
of the Sha’ar Hagolan figurines were intended to represent cereal grains. A similar style of
eyes was used in figurines of later European farming settlements. For example, Figure 4.4
illustrates a comparable female figurine, dating to about 5800– 5600 bce, from the Sesklo
Neolithic culture located in Thessaly, Greece. According to Alasdair Whittle, there is a
strong emphasis among the figurines on female reproduction, and “cereal grain eyes” prob-
ably symbolized abundance and fecundity in relation to the growth of crops.^19
Many of the Neolithic female figurines are vase- shaped with long necks. One of the most
striking of the vase- shaped figurines is the “Hamangian type” from Dobruja, in Bulgaria/Figure 4.1 Female figurines bearing grain impressions, from the Luka- Vrublevetskaya settlement
in the upper Dneister Valley, proto- Cucuteni, late fifth millennium bce.
From Gimbutas, M. (1982), The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. University of
California Press, p. 204.