Pape (Landes). The hair is kinky (negroid), the face left unchiseled. The arms are much reduced, the lower arms and hands being represented only in slight relief. The knees are well formed, but below the knees the legs are much shortened, although provided with calves. The entire figurine is proof that the artist was a master at representing the human form and that here he intended to emphasize those parts most closely associated with fecundity. The only suggestion of apparel or ornament is a bracelet on each wrist. The fauna of this horizon includes the mammoth, horse, reindeer, stag, and fox. All nine layers are Aurignacian, with a transition to Solutréan at the top. It was my good fortune to be in Vienna the week the Venus of Willendorf arrived, and, after the museum staff, to be the first archeologist to examine the specimen.
In addition to the Venus of Brassempouy (pl. 2, fig. b), the Piette collection includes other female figurines in the same style and from a corresponding horizon. One of these, also from the grotte du Pape, is said to have served as a poinard handle (pl. 3, fig. a). The blade formed by the prolongation of the back is broken. Presumably the figure never had been supplied with head and arms. Another example, found in the cavern of Mas-d'Azil (Ariège), is a female bust carved from the incisor of a horse (pl. 3, fig. b). This piece is of special importance because of the chiseling of the features, which were lacking in the headless specimens from Brassempouy and also are not differentiated in the Venus of Willendorf. Piette would place in this or an intermediate group the bas relief from Laugerie-Basse, carved on a reindeer palm and representing a human female near the feet of a reindeer (pl. 2, fig. c). The skin being almost completely hidden beneath a hairy coating indicated by incised lines, there was no need of apparel. Ornaments, however, are not lacking. Besides bracelets recalling those worn by the Venus of Willendorf, there is a necklace. Curiously enough, in the same Aurignacian layer at Brassempouy that furnished the adipose type with pendent breasts were found figurines belonging to a distinctly different class, representing a slender, probably superior race. The best single example of this class is the femme à la capuche (pl. 4). The long slender neck calls for a body and legs to match, and these are seen in other figures from the same horizon.
The discovery by Prof. Otto Schoetensack of a human lower jaw in the lower Quaternary sands at Mauer, near Heidelberg, rightly comes in the category of valley deposit finds. We have chosen, however, to reserve it for the general discussion of human remains.
A combination of the three stations—Helin, Saint-Acheul and Willendorf—not only gives us every paleolithic horizon, the transitional Tourassian or Asylian alone excepted, in stratigraphic position, but also determines their position with respect to the eolithic below
