Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia By M ...

Figure 10. Vessel with two perforated knobs and small, rimmed mouth. China, Neolithic Period, Machang Type, late third millennium BCE. Earthenware with design of a figure having a schematic head in black and red pigment. E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Edwin F. Jack Fund. 1988.31. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

same circle is clearly meant to represent the head of a woman who has the identical spread-out arms and legs with the same sort of finny appendages as the Sheela-like woman in relief (see figure 10).²³ This design may be compared to that on a Cucuteni-Tripolye pot dating to 4200–4100 BCE.²⁴ The motif of fish and net is very ancient, stretching back to the Upper Palaeolithic,²⁵