Southeast European Neolithic figurines: beyond context, interpretation, and meaning (2017) (original) (raw)
2017, Published in In T. Insoll (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines, pp. 823-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
In this article, I review recent work on figurines from Neolithic southeastern Europe and suggest an alternative approach. I argue that we should abandon searches for explanation and for meanings of figurines as pieces of the past. The alternative is to work with figurine material in the present, disarticulated from prehistory, and to make new work that recognizes figurines’ position in the present.
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