Smørenge is one of the sites on Bornholm that keeps yielding mid-1st-millennium gold mini-figurines. But in addition to the 2D representations on embossed gold foil known as guldgubber, an artisan employed by the magnate family at Smørenge also made nude 3D figurines. The fifth of these was found by one of the island’s famously skilful metal detectorists in May, and she’s quite a revelation. Because representations of women are far less common than of men in Iron Age art, and nude women are almost unknown.
The Smørenge woman is wearing only a hatched belt. She has the prominent “seer’s thumbs” common in the era’s art, and all the female anatomy we know and love is clearly modelled. Lines depicting long hair are incised onto her head and neck. Notches on her upper arms suggest that she is intended to be tied with a piece of wire or thread. Her body’s overall curvature and her outstretched feet suggest that she is performing a back-flip, a motif known e.g. from the closely coeval Söderby bracteate hoard where a bearded man is seen doing acrobatics. She is 42 mm long and weighs 3 g.
The thing that commentators are wondering about is the odd cogged ridge along her spine. My guess is that she is simply a skinny acrobat whose vertebrae are visible as a line of bumps along her back.
René Laursen has a short presentation of the find at the Bornholm Museum web site, and a more detailed one in Skalk 2013:3 (June).
Aardvarchaeology - by Dr. Martin Rundkvist 