Ivory Birds
Ornament
Malta type, Siberie
Upper Palaeolithic
Around 25 000 years
The birds are certainly water birds, probably swans or geese given their long, elegant necks.
J. Cook, Ice Age Art, The British Museum, London. 2013
Commentary :
A community of hunters, carved bird-shaped ornaments from mammoth ivory, in Siberia. Discovered at Mal’ta, near Lake Baikal, most of them are dated around 20 000 years ago.
These small figurines are made in an extremely uniform style, and probably represent geese or swans with very long necks. Some forty pendants represent birds in flight.
Such figurines highlight the symbolic appropriation of flying birds, whose migration punctuated the cycle of the seasons, and conditioned the activities, of Late Palaeolithic, hunting societies.