ARTH 101 Short Response 1 (1) PDF

Ai Ugajin Professor Keane ARTH 101 25 January 2025 Short Response 1 Woman of Willendorf Austria, 24,000 - 22,000 BCE. Oolitic limestone, height 4% in. (11.1 cm). Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. ​ The artist focused considerable attention on cer...

Ai Ugajin Professor Keane ARTH 101 25 January 2025 Short Response 1 Woman of Willendorf Austria, 24,000 - 22,000 BCE. Oolitic limestone, height 4% in. (11.1 cm). Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. ​ The artist focused considerable attention on certain aspects of female anatomy in this figurine when it was created around 24,000 BCE. Found in 1908 near the village of Willendorf, Austria, it is now called the Woman of Willendorf. Less than 5 inches high, the figurine has a substantial belly and a deep and pronounced navel. The thighs are solid, the hips are wide, and the vulva is clearly defined. The arms, slender compared to the rest of the body, wrap around full breasts. The slightly forward-leaning head has no facial features, but it is decorated with a highly textured pattern that is sometimes interpreted as a textile – perhaps a knitted cap – or braided hair. Given its posture and tiny feet, the figurine, like many others from this period, was probably meant to be handled or carried rather than to stand upright. The limestone from which the Woman of Willendorf was carved is not native to the region, meaning that either the raw stone or the finished figure was transported from one place to another. Originally, it was colored red with ocher pigment. Stonehenge Salisbury Plain, southern England, 2900 - 1500 BCE. ​ From its earliest history, Stonehenge, on the Salisbury Plain of Wiltshire in southern England, seems to have been associated with cremated human burials, some of which have been excavated. This megalithic stone circle was built and rebuilt repeatedly over more than a thousand years (2900 - 1500 BCE), at the end of an episode of megalithic building practices in Neolithic Europe. Farmers in Britain had earlier constructed several concentric-circle earthworks (constructed banks of soil) known as causewayed enclosures. Communal feasting took place within these enclosures, and animal bones were dumped in the ditches. Stonehenge emerged in this landscape of communal gathering and rituals of the Neolithic British Isles, which were home to more than nine hundred stone circles. Stonehenge maintains its prominent position in the public imagination because of its architectural complexity, the care its builders took in selecting and transporting specific stones, and its expressive monumentality. ​ Stonehenge itself is both a henge enclosure and a concentric stone circle, built of huge pieces of gray sandstone in a post-and-lintel system. It probably underwent four main stages of construction and several phases of adjustment and rebuilding between 2900 and 1500 BCE. In the earliest stage of construction, a circular ditched enclosure measuring 320 feet (97.54 m) in diameter was built, and this feature was retained in later stages. ​ In the second stage, which took place during the third millennium BCE (2500 - 2000 BCE), a double ring of standing bluestone (so named for their bluish color, and weighing 5 tons each) was erected in the center of the ditched enclosure. These heavy bluestones were transported from the Preseli Hills of Wales, a distance of at least 240 miles (386 km). The builders of Stonehenge also used bluestones to make axes, traces of which were discovered on the site. In the third stage of construction, the builders used sandstone monoliths, much more massive than the bluestones, to form a new ringed enclosure consisting of five trilithons. The tallest of these trilithons are 24 feet (7.32 m) high. The five trilithons were arranged in a horseshoe layout facing a break in the circular ditch leading to a 35-foot-long (10.67 m) path. In the fourth and final state of construction in the mid-second millennium BCE (around 1500 BCE), the complex gained its contemporary layout when the builders reorganized the bluestones between the trilithons and the sandstone circle. The alignment of the trilithon horseshoe and other stones with the sun during the winter and summer solstices led to theories that Stonehenge functioned as a calendar and served astronomical purposes. Stonehenge’s purpose continues to inspire debate among scholars.