Venus of Berekhat Ram

The Venus of Berekhat Ram is a pebble found at Berekhat Ram on the Golan Heights in the summer of 1981 by archaeologist N. Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An article by Goren-Inbar and S. Peltz (1995) claims it has been modified to represent a female human figure, identifying it as a possible artefact made by Homo erectus of the later Acheulean, in the early Middle Paleolithic. The term "Venus" follows the convention for labelling the unrelated Venus figurines of the Upper Paleolithic. The claim is contested.

The base object is an anthropomorphic red tufic pebble, 35 mm (1.4 in) long, which has had at least three grooves, possibly incised on it by a sharp-edged stone. One is a deep groove that encircles the narrower, more rounded end of the pebble, two shallower, curved grooves run down the sides. These grooves can be interpreted as marking the neck and arms of a figure. They closely resemble marks made in similar material by sharp-edged tools during exercises in experimental archaeology.

The claim that the pebble has been incised to represent a human figure has been questioned in three ways:

It is disputed whether these can be clearly distinguished from naturally-created lines. In 1997, American researcher Alexander Marshack argued using microscopic analysis that the grooves around the "neck" and down the "arms" were human made. However, Steven Mithen in 1999 argued that Marshack's arguments "do not demonstrate that the lines are indeed intentional and that if they were that they were intended to represent a female figure". He took the view that research was yet to be done to determine whether "scoria found in non-archaeological contexts" could "carry incisions that might be confused with stone tools"

It remains uncertain whether or not the pebble has been modified by human action. If it has, there is the separate question of whether the scratches had any artistic or symbolic intent, and if so, whether they sought to make the object resemble the female form, as do the much later and rather different Venus figurines of the Upper Palaeolithic.

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