This baked-clay sculpture was unearthed in a grain vessel at Çatal Höyük (Anatolia). The Neolithic settlement is important for research insofar as it is the first and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. The headless figure is generally thought to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother Goddess in the process of giving birth[1] while seated on her throne which has two hand rests in the form of leopard heads. Contrary to female forms from the Upper Paleolithic, the vulva triangle and the vulva are not accentuated in a explicitely naturalistic way. The great abstraction and stylization of Neolithic goddess figures at the time is striking[2]. Birthing in order to secure the continuation of offsprings and woman's significance as life-givers still seems of central importance for the social structure of mankind at the time.
Among other artefacts, reliefs of parturient women were found in the living quarters of Çatal Höyük. Vierzig assumes an „established fixed pattern"[3] and an emphasis on female symbolism. These symbolic figures represent the cyclic regeneration[4], however, by means of a different artistic implementation. A fixed canon of forms is missing, and the figures differ from each other in the way they are represented. This is mainly due to people's altered living conditions[5] since they settled down and created their own methods of representation at the time. However, the domination of female depictions is noticeable, more in the eastern than in the western regions of Europe.

(Translation: C. Wilhelm)