Graeber / Wengrow 213: "Today, most archaeologists consider it deeply unsound to interpret prehistoric images of corpulent women as 'fertility goddesses' [...] Nowadays, archaeologists are more likely to point out that many figurines could just as easily have been the local equivalents of Barbie dolls [or] to dismiss the entire debate by insisting that we simply have no idea why people created so many female images and never will, so any interpretations on offer are more likely to be projections of our own assumptions about women, gender, or fertility than anything that would have made sense to an inhabitant of Neolithic Anatolia"
and yet, a discovery at Catalhöyük of a limestone figurine clarifies that "the sagging breasts, drooping belly, and rolls of fat appear to signify not pregnancy, as once was believed, but age" (220)
"Such findings suggest that the more ubiquitous [clay] female figurines, while clearly not all objects of worship, weren't necessarily all dolls or toys either"
they are "matriarchs of some sort, their forms revealing an interest in female elders. And no equivalent representations of male elders have been found"