The so-called Marmotta’s Venus, a female carved stone figurine, was found by the underwater excavations in the village. It was placed under the floor of an hut with special features that resembles a shrine. It’s a figure of Mother Goddess of a type spreading all over Neolithic Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Europe.

Morphology of the object:

The profile of the figurine’s head is conical shaped with a convex base: the face –lacking facial features - points upward and the hair is held at the back of the neck by a hairnet which falls on the shoulders. The shoulders are straight, the bust is clearly laying backwards while the back is slightly hunched. The arms are finely carved with the forearms, thinner and missing the hands which disappear underneath the large and feeble breasts. The stomach is prominent, emphasized by lateral marks that end on the statuette’s backside: finely carved are the belly-button and pubic triangle. The sides, the buttocks and the thighs are particularly voluminous. The legs are parted by a deep carved line. A perpendicular line on the legs may represent either the knees or the feet which end in a pointed feature.

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The figurine resembles, if not to the detail, some of the “Venus” in the Early Palaeolithic and Epipaleolithic contexts in Europe but has also been compared to other female statuettes, made out of stone, ceramics and bone found in the Balkans, Aegean and Mediterranean area, dating back to the Middle Neolithic period. The “Venus” from the Lake of Bracciano can specifically be compared to the “yellow steatite statuette” recovered in the Late Palaeolithic stratigraphy in the caves of Balzi Rossi(Liguria). This figurine is similar in dimensions to the one from “La Marmotta” but coarser in the craftsmanship and in regard to the anatomical features shows a different female configuration, a less emphasized obesity. The presence of a deposit with a long stratigraphic sequence only hundred of metres from the Neolithic village of “La Marmotta”, deposit in which lithic tools datable back to the Upper Paleolithic Period have been recovered, may attest the steatite statuette as preceding the village foundation.It is therefore possible that the settlers from the Neolithic village of “La Marmotta” had by chance come across archaeological presence from a previous age from which took some objects.

The figurine was probably carved to be seen from all point of views since all sides are finely crafted. It has been suggested that the “Venus” was located on a half-seated position with the bust reclining back-wards, as if seated on a kind of chair. Seated or half-seated depictions of statuettes are not uncommon among the earliest Neolithic examples from the Near East and Greece. These “Venus” share with the statuette from “La Marmotta” other characteristics such as the position of the arms, located under the breast as if holding it up instead of on the breast as commonly depicted on Palaeolithic statuette examples, and the conical shape of the face in most cases turn upwards in contrast to the female images from the Palaeolithic period usually interpreted to be looking downward. It is also on the base of these details that the figurine from “La Marmotta” was attributed to the Neolithic Period. The statuette was recovered within the village, underneath the floor of a rectangular hut, peculiar because of the typology of ritual items found in its interior. In the same location in which the figurine had been laid down, close to a hearth, were also kept fragments of ochre and rare artefacts such as decorated bones, gemini vessels, impressed and painted small bowls, which all seem to hold some cult relevance. Because of the presence of these items it has been suggested that the hut might have been used for religious practice, some kind of sanctuary.

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