Archaeology? Pornography? We report, you decide

Let's take a peek and see what those wacky archaeologists are up to now. When we last looked in they were busy building fake stonehenges and dolmens to wow the tourists [all in the interests of "science" mind you].

Now comes news that a team of German archaeologists has found an 8 cm long clay statuette of the lower half of a man.

Dated from 7200 years ago it is, they claim, " the oldest male clay figurine ever discovered in the world." They named it "Adonis."

But Adonis was not alone. They also found fragments of a female statuette of similar size. And what is most interesting -- both figures seem to be bent forward at the waist.

There are several ways this evidence could be interpreted -- naturally the archaeologists zoomed straight to the one that would garner the most headlines and called in the press. They claim that the two figurines should be positioned so that the male is standing behind and bent over the female, thus creating the, "the oldest pornographic scene in the world."

And, lest you think that there is no scientific importance to the find, we are told that it "shatters the belief that sex was a taboo subject in that era [the neolithic]."

What arrant nonsense!

All human societies impose some taboos on sex. It might be kin related, age related, gender related, class related, race related, or whatever. The point is, sex taboos in some form or other exist in all societies. There has never been any reason to believe that all sex was taboo in neolithic times, but it is almost certain that some sex was. The statues, if they are rightly interpreted as a couple...well..., coupling, prove nothing with regard to sex taboos.

But they do have some other significance. Much has been made by feminist scholars of the existence of several naked female figurines from the neolithic period and the absence of any male counterparts. These "venuses" have been linked to fertility rituals, quite reasonably, but some writers have spun wild fantasies about an "old European" matriarchy that represented an alternative to later patriarchal cultures (presumably introduced by Indo-European invaders).

The existence of Adonis, an unquestionably male figure, from that period means that the matriarchy thesis is weakened, since in part it rests on the assumption that only female forms were depicted. And, if the two figures indeed are copulating, as the "scientists" suggest, it strengthens the identification of naked figurines with fertility rituals.

So, the find in Saxony is indeed significant and should be recognized as such. But true to form, the "scientists" involved are quick to proclaim the finding of the world's "oldest pornographic scene." Sex, you see, sells!

Read the whole thing here.

ps: I'm leaving aside the entire question [which is huge] of projecting modern concepts such as pornography onto past cultures. It's a problem historians have to deal with constantly. Archaeologists, however, seem to find it less problematic.

For another take on this story by a Cambridge archaeologist visit Athena here.