[Drammach]

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.

I would simply note that figurines of horses, cattle, and other livestock are also found at prehistoric sites.

Women may not have been so much respected as valued, for their ability to produce sons instead of daughters, or producing strong offspring that survived to adulthood.

Likewise, the idols (or at least, statuettes ) were broken, which could just as easily represent a symbolic sacrifice of some sort as anything else.

There is definitely room for interpretation.

[SunkenCiv]

Good point. For all we know this was an accounting system, not that dissimilar to other known preliterate accounting systems.