| Chapter 2: | Female Figures in Eurasian Neolithic Iconography |
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Figure 14. Petroglyphs, Qutubi, north central Xinjiang, Western China. Photograph courtesy of Wang Binghua.
the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture in Romania and other cultures from Ukraine and Poland, which date to ca. 4000 BCE (see figure 15).29 The legs of the female figures in the petroglyphs are splayed in the dance/trance position, and their genitals are stylized. They have tall headdresses which recall those of some female mummies found in the Tarim Basin.
There are some Neolithic European female figures which clearly serve the realm of death; they are missing the erotic aspect but there is evidence of a connection between death and regeneration:30 the “stiff white nude” figures of the Cyclades, Anatolia, and the Balkans, often found in grave contexts, may be bringers of death, but a pregnant Cycladic figure31 demonstrates that the