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• 1 media/chauvet-cave-painting-1024x684.jpg media/site_1426_0003-1200-630-20140622160347.jpg media/chauvet-cave-painting-1024x684.jpg 2020-10-14T21:49:03+00:00 Women Creators in Ancient Art 18 by Dane Forsum plain 2020-10-20T00:18:00+00:00            For much of our recent history many misconceptions have been placed on our past as a species. One reason is that people have continually, whether intentionally or not, to portray themselves and people like them at the forefront of society andits creations. As the popular phrase goes, “history is written by the victors”, however ‘victor’ might not be the correct word to use. Perhaps a better interpretation would be that those who hold power in a society always determine the history of that society, and unfortunately throughout much of modern European history these people in power have undoubtedly been men. Men being in power has created immense disparities in nearly all aspects of life, especially in keeping women out of decision-making processes in anything from government roles down to small businesses. While it’s difficult to discern whether or not this has been out of malicious intent or not, it has created huge gaps in knowledge and generally led us down a path of male centric ideas of histories, as many of the celebrated historians have been men who wrote and made claims about history from a male centric perspective. 
              These male centered claims go back to the farthest reaches of history, as many historians have surmised that prehistoric artworks, whose creators’ societies are completely unknown to us today, were mostly created by men or male centered societies. Commonly, not only are the claims that these societies were led by men, but that the societies leading these artistic developments were the ancestors of modern-day Europeans. While this may never come as a direct claim by any historian, many of the artistic remains that are discussed in ancient art history are assumed to be the creation not only of male dominated societies, but also created at the hands of men as well. One of the most common paleolithic art that has remained is cave paintings, which have been found in many places around the world and usually depict big game animals most common in the area. The most often discussed caves in many art history classes, such as Lascaux or Chauvet, mostly reside in Southern Europe. Because in many cases these are the only caves discussed, it gives an idea that this is where the majority of early artistic and phycological development occurred.However, cave paintings have existed throughout the world, such as Painted Rock Cave in the Amazon[1], which was inhabited multiple times starting in the paleolithic era. Unlike the caves found in Europe, this cave does not depict big game animals, yet it still shows images that are associated with the world around it. While the people who painted Chauvet Caves and the people who created Painted Rock Cave are differentiated by immense distances, they still, almost simultaneously, developed a need to portray the world around them. Yet historians have assumed that these depictions in Europe came at the hands of the male hunters to guide their sons in the hunt, leaving women out of the narrative entirely, as it is assumed they did not aid in hunting activities. However, this is untrue, as Hughes points out in the article Were the First Artists Mostly Women?[2] that women in these societies often helped carry meat back from the hunt to their camps, and that without a doubt women were as concerned with the outcome of the hunt as men were. This is exemplified by the research mentioned in the article, which determined that 75% of the handprints that the painters created in the cave were those of women.  This nullifies any reasoning then that these great cave paintings would come only at the hands of men or male ran societies as many scholars have claimed. 
              Another common artifact we see across Europe from period are the small female figures, such as the Woman of Willendorf, estimated to be made around 30,000 BC. These pieces often depict faceless women with plump bodies that give special detail to the reproductive organs, such as large breasts and defined pubic triangles. These figures were originally referred to as Venuses, as it was believed that they were carried around by men as tokens to aid fertility. This thinking is very hetero male centric, putting the use of the woman’s body only as it benefits a man. Similar to the cave paintings, this is simply not the way to go about looking at creations of a society long lost to us. If we expand our lens understanding that we apply to these figures, we can see a multitude of other purposes they could have served. For instance, the reproductive abilities of women would most likely be something incredible to these early ancestors, whose fate quiet literally rested on being able to create more humans. Add on to this the almost calendar like ability of women’s menstrual cycle at a time long before there were any astronomical measurements of time, and we have a body that would have most likely been revered by all. Reducing this to simply a means for men to reproduce is simply narrowminded and sexist, especially when we consider the evidence presented in Hughes’ article, which gives us an understanding that men most likely were not the sole creators of these objects.
   
              By following this male European centered interpretation of history, we are presented not with lies, but rather with misled and blind interpretations of the past. It’s not that interpretations of objects like the Venus of Willendorf are wrong, but instead that they narrow our view rather than expand it. And it is in that narrowing that leaves out the experiences of women most often from the general narrative of history, creating a cycle of suppressing the importance that female agency has had in our history, whether that be through art or politics or anything. Therefore, it is important for us today to not look exclusive at these ancient objects as they are described to us, but rather look for new ways we can interpret them, and using our combined understandings of the world to guide us.
   

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  [1] Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 2005), 338.

  [2] Virginia Hughes, “Were the First Artists Mainly Women?” National Geographic, October 2013.