Female figure pendant
El Pendo, Cantabria, Spain
Antler
Height: 6.44 cms
Museo de Prehistoria y Arqueología de Cantabria, Santander
1740
The pear-shaped outline of this pendant suggests the shape of a female figure perhaps shown with the swaying hips and raised arms of a dancer. The anatomical details of the figure have been absorbed into its abstract form. There are no breasts or obvious pudenda. The legs are not differentiated but the outline of the perforation may reflect raised arms. The only marks on the body form a group of diagonal incisions made in a line on the right side of the front of the body from the hip to the thigh.
When first found in 19xx, the piece was thought to be part of a baton but it is too small for this and it is more probably a pendant. Its elegant form is unique and may now be seen among the type of female representations that begin to appear after about 18,000 years ago all of which are much more abstracted than earlier sculptures that depict more realistic, maternal bodies. The later figures encapsulate femininity and sexual potential with great simplicity. Their postures often suggest dancing and have led some commentators to suggest that they reflect ceremonies and the social significance of women in late Ice Age societies.
The simplicity of form seen in this type of figure stimulates the brain of the observer to fill in, imagine and take mental cues from the image that are meaningful to the maker and wearer, as well as perhaps a wider social milieu. As such it is an intellectual presentation of form that is similar in concept to the delightful abstractions of modern artists such as seen in the Nu mi-allongé by Henri Matisse.
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