di Alessandra de Nardis
The almost 11 cm high statuette of Willendorf is one of the most important examples of ancient art in Europe. It is made by carving a rock called "oolite" which is not found in and around Willendorf. A research team led by the anthropologist Gerhard Weber of the University of Vienna, the two geologists Alexander Lukeneder, Mathias Harzhauser and the paleo-archaeologist Walpurga Antl-Weiser of the Natural History Museum in Vienna has now discovered, thanks to the help of tomography high resolution, that the material on which the Venus was carved probably comes from northern Italy; in this regard, an interesting publication on Scientific Reports of February 28, 2022, sheds new light on the remarkable mobility of the first modern humans south and north of the Alps.
The Willendorf statuette is not only special in terms of style but also due to the particular material on which it is carved. While other figurines are usually made of ivory or bone, sometimes also with different stones, this is the only known specimen made of oolite so far. The figurine found in the Wachau in 1908 and exhibited in the Natural History Museum in Vienna had only been examined on the surface, with current studies the scientists have obtained images with a resolution of up to 11,5 micrometres, a quality that is otherwise only seen at the microscope.
Image derived from microcomputed tomography scans of Venus. Left: segmented bivalve (Oxytomidae) which was located on the right side of the head of Venus; scan resolution 11,5 μm; characteristic features are the boss and the wings. Middle: volume rendering of the virtual Venus; six embedded limonitic concretions: right neck (orange), left neck (blue), left breast (red), left belly (yellow), left hip (green), left leg (purple); three mollusk fragments: bivalve head right (blue, only 2,5 mm long; see white line from “Bivalve” label for location), shell center (orange), shell left (turquoise). Right: single μCT slice showing oolite porosity and layering; note the relative density of the limonitic concretion; scan resolution 53 μm. (© Gerhard Weber, University of Vienna)
Oolite samples from France to eastern Ukraine, from Germany to Sicily were examined, also verifying the size of the grains. None of them within a radius of 200 kilometers is present in the Willendorf region, while it has been found that the samples are statistically indistinguishable from samples from a location in northern Italy near Lake Garda.
"People in the Gravettian – the tool culture of the time – sought out and lived in favorable places. When the climate or the situation of the prey changed, they moved, preferably along rivers“, explains Gerhard Weber. Such a journey could have taken generations.
Statistics clearly indicate the origin of the oolite in the figurine in northern Italy; however, another location was also taken into consideration, it is located in eastern Ukraine, more than 1.600 kilometers linear distance from Willendorf, but the samples are not perfectly compatible as the Italian ones.
Alessandra de Nardis – March 2022
