This led some specialists to conclude that Upper Paleolithic people may have practised ritual mutilation of the hands, or that they may have suffered digit loss due to disease or frostbite. He proposed that a kind of sign language or code was a better explanation. By far the most distinctive representations in the Gravettian are the female statuettes. They are sculpted from a variety of materials, including ivory, limestone, steatite, and calcite. Certain examples from Czechoslovakia were even modeled in clay and kiln-fired.
Breasts are most often large and pendulous and buttocks are generally pronounced.
In some cases, the pubic triangle is indicated. Two-dimensional examples of female forms, engraved or sculpted on large limestone blocks, are also known. Sculpted in bas-relief, the figure was also covered with red ochre. Gvozdover's careful analysis concludes that most of these statuettes, carefully sculpted from the tusks of 10,000 pound woolly mammoths, depict women in the terminal stages of pregnancy and frequently in birthing postures. It is composed of black painted animal figures on stone slabs fallen from the cave wall.