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The Vulva in Stone Age Art from Europe and Australia - The vulva is well represented in Palaeolithic art. It is often seen as engravings on stone, bone or ivory, but also as petroglyphs. The representation is obviously a well known one that has become abstracted to the point where it is often no more than an oval or circle with a single mark at its centre or at its lower edge. Although many examples are from Europe, and from the upper Palaeolithic, it occurs over a broad time range, and a very large area, including not just Europe, but Australia and North America as well.Rock art depicting females in the Americas
The vulva form appears in both natural and enhanced forms in rock art.
In North America, there are a number of sites where vulva forms can be found, many times in association with caves or fissures in the rock.
In southern Wisconsin and elsewhere, the diamond shape is especially prevalent, usually carved near cave entrances. However, special cases are found on the open landscape, one being a petroform site where a pronounced vulva-shaped rock is aligned to the winter solstice sunrise.
At King Phillip’s Seat in Rhode Island, a sacred site for the Wampanoag people of eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, a vulva rock along with other profound features was a place of gathering. There are others.
These vulva forms were/are a part of the Mother Earth association marking either entrances to the womb (such as in caves and associated springs) or, like the vulva rock aligned to the solstice, may be placed to enact the consummation in the marriage of the earth and sky during a critical time of the year.
Text above: Adapted from Bender (2021)
Moab, Utah – 'Moab Vagina' or 'Birthing rock' Petroglyph.
In Moab, Utah, a distinctive petroglyph known as the 'Moab Vagina' depicts a vulvar shape alongside phallic symbols. This unique design suggests a local identity among the Moab Basketmakers, distinguishing their rock art from other Basketmaker bands in the region.
The glyph is heavily abraded. This may have been the result of frequent rubbing, painting, or both as a way to 'harvest magic' from the image. For whatever reason, the intensity of this abrasion indicates that the assumed magical properties of the totem were called upon repeatedly for a long time.
The labor and care lavished on this image was probably occurring at the Portal Vagina as well. The energy expended at these two sites may have supported and sustained a presumed metaphysical matrix that empowered female fertility icons and female-themed panels along the canyon’s walls. This is speculation but I don’t think it’s too far from the mark.
Several sites in Eastern North America, including Miller Cave, Three Hills Creek, Washington State Park-A, and Bushberg-Meisner, feature vulvar petroglyphs. At Bushberg-Meisner, the vulva faces east, aligning with the sun's rays during the summer solstice, indicating its association with female deities and fertility rituals.
( The complete glyph on the left shows a human female in a spread-eagled pose, in a very simple outline. Between the widespread legs is what appears to be a disproportionately large depiction of a vulva. The artist has made little effort to make the glyph have lifelike proportions, and the vulva may have been made overly large in order to emphasise its importance.
It should be noted that an alternative interpretation is that the 'vulva' is a newborn baby with feet suggested. This would require (depending on the accuracy of the artwork) that it was a breech birth, with the feet emerging first, which is a rare and dangerous orientation for a birth, an unlikely subject for what was obviously a very important petroglyph - Don )
Photo and text: © Rory Paul Tyler, moabrockart.org/the-birthing-rock-an-analysis/
The petroglyph is on an isolated, relatively small cube of rock close to the road to Moab.
Photo: © Dan Wagner, www.greatamericanhikes.com/post/exploring-utah-s-birthing-scene-petroglyph
This is a deeply etched vulva motif.
Findspot: Black Hills, western South Dakota
Photo and text: Hampson (2011)
Three vulva motifs at Tres Yonis.
Findspot: Black Hills, western South Dakota
Photo and text: Hampson (2011), Hampson (201+)
Photo and text: Hampson (2011), Hampson (2016)
Vulva petroglyphs from the Coso Range, California (left) and Hot Creek Valley, Nevada
The petroglyphs on the righthand photo are from First Menses Site in Hot Creek Valley, Nevada. Ethnographic interviews with Numic-speaking people after World War II indicate that the area was a female initiation site. The location is secluded from view, with running water and an abundance of white fine grain sand, there is a quarry, a paint source, and medicinal plants nearby, facts which strongly support the assertion of First Menses being an important place for female puberty rites.
Photo and text: Molinar (2025)
This complex petroglyph above from the Santa Ynez mountains has been interpreted as a whale, or as a vulva.
There appears to be doubt about its age and origin, First Nations or Euro-Americans.
( This object appears to me to have broken off a large slab or wall, and come to rest misaligned to its former orientation. I have rotated the image, and tried to remove the distortions of the unavoidable angle the photographer was forced to use, to give one interpretation of its possible original orientation. It becomes difficult for me to see it as a whale, but it has some of the elements of a vulva as depicted in this culture. There are elements of its design that are similar to the vulvas from Coso Range above, and Miller's Cave as shown below. I believe it to be ancient, created by a pre-contact first nations artist - Don )
Source: yankeebarbareno.com/2020/06/21/petroglyph-santa-ynez-mountains/
Photo and text: © Jack Elliott, 2020
Sketch of the half-metre high vulva/vagina petroglyphs pecked into rocks near the entrance of Miller’s Cave.
Source: Bender (2021)
Chalfant Petroglyph - dozens of vulvas outlined on a pockmarked slab.
The Chalfant Petroglyph site is located 18 miles north of Bishop, California. Scores of petroglyphs can be found over a quarter mile stretch of chalk cliffs about a mile from the highway. The main group of images, that are heavily concentrated in one area, include many that still appear in near perfect condition. The site is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Photo and text: www.gjhikes.com/2023/12/chalfant-petroglyphs.html
Chalfant Petroglyph - dozens of vulvas, as above.
Boulders with such carvings are also known as 'Baby Stones' as it is believed they marked locations where indigenous women gathered for ceremonies to insure pregnancy and ease of childbirth.
They may also have been places where women went to give birth, and where adolescent girls were taken for coming-of-age ceremonies.
After the petroglyph people vanished, newer tribal women continued for some while to use the sites, and to a small degree tradition-minded Native Americans still do.
Photo and text: www.facebook.com/groups/thedivineshekhinah/posts/1358488331512842/
A wall of vulvas, above, and a closeup of one section of the wall, below.
Findspot: Condor Petroglyphs area, Death Valley National Park
Photo: © Jack Elliot
Source: yankeebarbareno.com/2017/02/20/condor-petroglyphs-death-valley-national-park/
References
- Bender H., 2021: Some Select Vulva Rock Petroglyphs and Forms in North America, Anthropomorphic Images in Rock Art Paintings and Rock Carvings, Chapter: 15, Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, Oxford
- Hampson J., 2011: Rock art regionalism and identity: case studies from Trans-Pecos Texas and Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, PhD dissertation, Clare College and Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, March 2011
- Hampson J., 2016: Embodiment, Transformation and Ideology in the Rock Art of Trans-Pecos Texas, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, February 2016 DOI: 10.1017/S0959774315000505
- Molinar M., 2025: Drawing the World: Coso Range Rock Art, www.researchgate.net/publication/389250696, February 2025 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27251.23842