Photograph of the Venus of Willendorf, an 11.1-centimetre-high (4.4 in) Venus figurine ; made between about 28,000 and 25,000 BCE. It was found in 1908 by a workman named Johann Veran during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier and Josef Bayer at a Palaeolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the town of Krems. carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre.