Early Neolithic Figurine Found in Bulgaria

VIDIN, BULGARIA—Archaeology in Bulgaria reports that the upper part of an 8,000-year-old figurine thought to represent a mother goddess has been unearthed in northwestern Bulgaria. “The face of the ceramic head [features] the typical stylized depictions of the eyes, the nose,” said archaeologist Georgi Ganetsovski of the Regional Museum of History in Vratsa. “What we at first thought to be some kind of decoration turned out to be [the depiction of] a veil covering the head, with ornaments along its edges.” The sculpture, recovered from a large dugout dwelling, is thought to have been made by the region’s first agriculturalists. Other artifacts recovered from the site include pottery discs that may have been used for rituals, an arrow with a broken bone tip that may have been used for fishing, retouched flint tools, bone tools, pottery vessels, a ceramic cone, and a ceramic spindle whorl. For more on archaeology relating to Europe's first farmers, go to “The Neolithic Toolkit.”