ith Athens negotiating its worst crisis in modern times – and public finances at an all time low
It's extremely interesting that this would be part of the conversation and part of the context for returning the "lost" art. Would bringing the British-owned parthenon pieces back to Greece really ensure an end to the crisis? How do we know people care that much?
(If the swollen figurines were meant as childbirth charms, then disappointment – not to say horror and despair – must have been commonplace. But even this speculation can turn back on itself. If the spells regularly did not work – if childbirth so often ended in death or deformity – then would affect actually ever adhere to the idol? Whatever the tiny pregnant figures were supposed to do, could they ever have been imagined to have power over reality? Their powerlessness would have been endlessly reconfirmed.
It's a little comical to think about the implications of this hypothesis. If the figurines were somehow a "good luck charm" of sorts, with the end goal of yielding a healthy childbirth, would smashing the body of the holder of the child symbolically improve the situation? And if the figures were often sculpted without arms or legs, assuming they weren't hammered off, this doesn't give the "sacred" idol much power. Again, it just displays the female body as passive and easily dominated or manipulated. Their powerlessness is proven not only because they aren't literally magical childbirth charms, but also because they were likely sculpted without limbs. I cannot imagine an idol, if one believed it had consciousness or power or emotion, being very happy without it's limbs.
The figurines seem meant to be clasped in the hand or dangled from the neck
This reminds me of Conkey's exceptional description of how female body parts have been considered and analyzed. She too describes the body parts that are purposefully made to "stand out" and the body parts that are blurred-- that are perhaps less important. She expands on why this could be similarly to what's written here, stating that when a figurine does not have hands and feet it is readily possessed and seemingly passive. I find the word passive in this context the most complex to think about, not knowing how the women of 30,000 years ago thought about these representations of themselves. I also find this especially interesting looking through a modern lens, considering current issues on gendered subject-object relationships and the fight for women to have complete autonomy over their own bodies.