Statuette representing a sitting woman found at Pazardžik (Bulgary) and dating back to the V millennium B.C. It is not clear whether the figure represents a goddess or simply a woman, but in every case the emphasis put on the belly and the sexual organs, while the features of the face are transposed in geometrical shapes scarcely outlined, is a characteristic that recall the widespread typology of the symbolic representations of female fecundity. During the Neolithic begins the season that sees the production of innumerable earthenware statuettes, mostly female, that is to be linked up to the introduction of ceramics, unknown in the Paleolithic age. If, on the one hand, this reveals the new exigencies and possibilities of settled life, on the other hand it brought to light the novel symbolic connection established between the farmer and the earth he is laboring, engendering a veritable “sacralization of earth” (Srejovic 2005).
The object is exhibited in the National Library in Wien, Austria.


[Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PazardzikGreadmother.jpg]