Prehistoric Figurines Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Due to the physical properties of fired clay objects, the Neolithic, unlike the Paleolithic era, left behind a significantly larger quantity of material evidence, allowing us to fathom the economic, social, spiritual and artistic trends of the populations of the New Stone Age. Figurines stand out as one of the most remarkable features of Neolithic material culture, reflecting the image of Neolithic man and his style of life in a very direct and impressive way. Through various forms and stylizations, figurines reveal details about the clothing, adornment, hairstyle or physical appearance of an individual, while their functional and spiritual character remains a burning issue in archaeological debates.
In European Neolithic era, the culture of Vinča stands out as the one characterized by superior craftsmenship in clay modeling, its most prominent aspect being figurative sculpture, one of the most outstanding artistic achievements of the Neolithic era. Although figurative sculpture is present in all phases of Vinča culture (5400- 4500 BC), it could be claimed that its diversity, profusion and high artisanship culminated in the centuries around 4800 BC (Тасић 2008: 144). It is assumed that such flourishing of art is connected with the continual existence of the settlements and stable economy, followed by an organized social system with a developed belief system and established ritual practices.
The sample chosen for the statistical analysis of the sex or any other detail is limited to the specimens with preserved body parts on which it is possible to notice the existence of the required element. Thus, if we are interested in the sex of the figurine, the analytical sample will only be comprised of the specimens with preserved body parts on which sex attributes could be expected. The procedure is similar if we are interested in the number of bracelets shown on female figurines, in which case the sample will include only the specimens with defined sex and at least one preserved arm. Such sampling procedure was followed consistently in all the statistical analyses of the presence of certain elements on the figurines.
The total of Neolithic and early Eneolithic figurines from northern areas of the Central Balkans is 359 specimens of figurative sculpture, collected from fifteen sites from four narrow geographical areas, marked as Župa aleksandrovačka, lower section of Južna Morava, Ponišavlje and Toplica. The number of sites and figurines per area varies considerably from one area to another; thus, in Župa aleksandrovačka, only one site with twenty-three figurines has been registered, while only seventeen figurines have been collected from four sites in Ponišavlje. On the other hand, 225 specimens from five sites in Toplica were included in the sample for analysis, and only ninety-four specimens from the same number of sites registered in the lower section of Južna Morava entered the catalogue. Such irregular concentration is connected with the degree to which these areas have been researched, but also with the inference that the highest concentration of figurines has been noted between the lines Vinča- Gladnice and Starčevo – Pavlovac. More precisely, the concentration of figurines decreases with the increase of the distance between Vinča’s settlements and these lines.
The total sample showed that the largest number of specimens is incomplete and can be classified into some of the categories according to the preserved elements (Table 1). The specimens with only heads preserved are the most common ones (152 items or 42%), while the fragments which represent only preserved body parts are much less frequent (64 items or 18%), followed by headless figurines (58 items or 16%), complete figurines (46 items, 13%), busts (22 items, 6%) and limb fragments (17 items, 5%). Some researchers noted that the fragmentation of figurines is related to deliberate breaking and mutilation of certain body parts. This thesis is based on the fact that complete figurines are most commonly found in the remains of Neolithic houses, while a much larger number of figurines’ fragments are found scattered across the site or thrown into the garbage pit (Porčić 2011, 2012a). Hence, it is assumed that deliberate breaking of figurines was a part of a widespread ritual which used to define or regulate the complex social relations among the members of Vinča’s communities (Chapman J. 2000; Porčić 2012b; Лазић 2015).
The fragmentation of the zoomorphic figurines allowed sex analysis in seventeen items (52%), while 16 items (48%) had no preserved body parts where the attributes for sex recognition would be expected. Thus, in the chosen sample of zoomorphic figurines, there are three items with a clearly defined male sex organ (18%), while it was impossible to clearly determine the sex in the rest.
An interesting characteristic of the figurines from the sample is that the heads on the male and sexless ones are preserved in the majority of cases (64% and 65%), while the percentage of female figurines with preserved heads is much lower and amounts to 23%. Such statistic supports the thesis that figurines without clear sex characteristics are also male representations. If we take into account the assumption that each figurine represents an individual from the community (Лазић 2015), as well as the fact that complete figurines are mainly found in houses (Porčić 2011, 2012a; Porčić and Blagojević 2014), we can assume that the majority of male figurines actually used to represent the head-of-household, i.e. the protector of the family. Although family relations in the communities of Vinča culture remain unknown to us, the long established thesis of complete absence of matriarchal societies throughout the entire history of humankind (Vezel 1983) could point to this possibility. However, such conclusions do not necessarily negate the importance of women in religion, cult and ritual practices. Observing their artistic beauty, representations and frequency, it could be assumed that certain female figurines justifiably represented an infinite source of inspiration for the study of Neolithic religion, where fertility cult and woman as a supreme deity of the Neolithic pantheon, with names such as Mother goddess, Great goddess, or the proto-mother, have always been emphasized.
The practice of keeping male anthropomorphic figurines may have been preserved through the cult of ancestral spirits, so this type of figurines was passed down from generation to generation as the idol and protector of the home. In relation to this, the reason for generally lower frequency of male statuettes on Vinča sites should be looked into. Potential scenarios which emerged from the analyses of the figurines found in a precisely registered context present us with several possibilities, but the assumption that each household had a figurine whose duration equalled that of the household itself or one generation (Porčić 2011) is the most well-argumented one. Activities connected to ancestor worship lead to the development of a belief system which could have evolved into concepts of heroes and gods in the course of time. The notion of ancestor cult and common history of a society limited the process of social differentiation through inherited power, authority or status, thus lowering social tensions (Insoll 2011). That way, male or sexless figurines can also be interpreted as status symbols of family's origins.
On the other hand, the sample showed that female figurines were broken more often, which could be related to a certain ritual during a woman's marriage and leaving the family home, but, since there are no insights in the structure of Neolithic society, this thesis remains just a bold assumption. We must note that such interpretation of Late Neolithic anthropomorphic figurines cannot be applied to all items in the sample, since it contains figures which represent babies, hermaphrodites, as well as individuals or groups in various scenes from the life of the community.