18,000-year-old artworks made of mammoth ivory

An international team of researchers has determined the origin of the ornaments on the 18 000-years old female figurines made of mammoth ivory, showing how the pattern of growing ivory influenced the artistic creativity of Ice Age carvers.

A study published in Nature partner journal Heritage Science involved the analysis of eighteen so-called Venus figurines made from mammoth ivory. These had been excavated over 100 years ago at the Mizyn campsite in Northern Ukraine. 

The figurines were examined microscopically, and six of them were 3D-digitised and studied as 3D models thanks to cultural heritage preservation work being carried out as part of the Ukrainian Heritage Digitisation and Dissemination Initiative, led by the Ukrainian NGO “Archaїс” together with NCO “CyArk,” and supported by the US Ambassador Fund for Cultural Preservation. As all historical artefacts in Ukraine became targets of Russian military efforts, limited access was granted to these unique objects, allowing their thorough digital recording for the first time.

"Projects like this not only deepen our understanding of the past but also create new opportunities for research through advanced documentation and digitisation methods. At a time when war continues to threaten Ukraine's cultural heritage, this work is more important than ever, as creating high-quality digital records of artefacts is a crucial step in preserving them and supporting future research. This is why close collaboration between researchers and museums is so important today. We are sincerely grateful to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine for the opportunity to study the unique Mizyn artefacts and for its support of research initiatives," Oleksandr Naumenko emphasises.

The team, coordinated by Simon Radchenko, included six researchers from Ukraine (National Museum of History of Ukraine), Norway (University of Stavanger), the UK (Centre of Artefacts and Materials Analysis, University of York), and Germany (Leibnitz Center for Archaeology). The research was carried out as a part of the project funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action. Researchers were able to describe the whole production cycle of the 18 000 year old figurines, revealing insights into the logic and inspiration sources for their intricate ornamentation.

Along with six Venus figurines from Mizyn, hundreds of other objects were digitised, launching a sustained effort in heritage preservation in Ukraine. However, due to their unique value, these figurines are the first to be studied with this level of precision, offering insights into how figurines were produced.

“Combining modern digital techniques with microscopic analysis and archaeological context has allowed us not only to understand better how these figurines were made, but also to gain new insights into their role in the lives of Late Pleistocene people. Our findings suggest that the ornaments were more than merely decorative. They likely played an important role in the social lives of the people who created these objects,” Oleksandr Naumenko notes.

The study shows that the growth lines of mammoth tusks, called Schreger lines and Owen lines, were observed, adored, and reproduced on the surface of ivory objects from the Ukrainian Ice Age. While this was hypothesised back in the 1960s, digital tools provided new evidence and a new level of detail, showing that the ornaments not only repeat the natural lines but also structure the figurines’ composition following this pattern.

In tandem with that, researchers observed traces of careful planning and laying out the anthropomorphic design, confirming the innovative trend of sculptural imaging – a combination of the 2D anthropomorphic image and the 3D anthropomorph this image is carved on. Altogether, this introduces figurines from Mizyn as creations of a different creative complexity than those known from the region before.

To further understand the phenomenon, the group compared the assumed production time for all known female figurines in Europe between 44 and 12 thousand years ago. This highlighted the special placement of Venuses from Ukraine in space and time. They mark the beginning of a new peak in making female figurines that happens after the Last Glacial Maximum – the most recent peak of cold weather in Europe. New figurines start emerging in what is now Ukraine, and spread in the region. Soon after that, similar trends for abstracted depiction of the female body appear in Europe – in Magdalenian and Gonnersdorf styles. However, these styles do not reproduce Schreger and Owen lines in ornamentation patterns, leaving this feature solely to Mizyn figurines.

“Radiocarbon dates for the Paleolithic of Eastern Europe are difficult to work with: many legacy dates have huge standard deviations, others are done on samples without properly stated context. So, we speak about very large uncertainty intervals, those of millennial scale and so, in fact, they can hide some fascinating stories inside which will be revealed by improvement in dating precision”, says Kiosak. 

The calibrated radiocarbon chronology indicates a substantial gap in the Upper Palaeolithic record of anthropomorphic figurines. A hiatus of approximately 3,000–5,000 years separates the Early and Middle Upper Palaeolithic figurines from those of the Late Upper Palaeolithic, spanning roughly 24,000–22,000 to 20,000–18,000 cal BP. The figurines re-emerged only after this interval, slightly earlier in eastern Europe within Epigravettian contexts, most prominently at Mizyn, and in western Europe within Magdalenian assemblages, as evidenced by the Venus Impudique and the finds from Las Caldas Cave.