26 May 2009 | Almost 100 figurines, constituting the “Prehistoric Women from Macedonia” exhibition, will be displayed in Montenegro’s capital starting today.

The 94 figurines are dated between the sixth and the middle of the third millennium BC - from the Neolithic, the Eneolithic and the Bronze periods.

The exhibition will be presented to admirers of miniature sculpture and archaeology by Irena Kolishtrkoska-Nasteva, the exhibition’s curator, the Vecer newspaper wrote today.

According to the exhibition’s description published by the Museum of Macedonia in Skopje, where it was on display in 2007, the original and hand-made figurines were discovered during archaeological excavations, always inside the houses. They were represented and venerated as idols, protectors of the home and the house. The prehistoric female sculptures possess symbols of fertility and beauty, and most of them are richly decorated with jewellery and hairstyles that serve as example of the everyday life of the prehistoric people.

There is hardly an excavated house from the Neolithic and the Eneolithic periods in which a female idol was not discovered, Kolishtrkoska-Nasteva told the Macedonian Arheoloshki Dnevnik website last year, adding that the figurines testify for the fact that women were very respected in by these prehistoric societies.

The exhibition in Podgorica comes after the figurines were displayed in the town of Kochani in eastern Macedonia, as BalkanTravellers.com reported. In addition to the Museum of Macedonia, they were also shown in the Archaeological Museum of Zagreb in 2007.

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