A symbol — but of what? Iron Age daggers, Alessi corkscrews and anthropoid embellishment reconsidered

Abstract

An ingenious derivation for the La Tène dagger with anthropoid hilt shows how craftsmen gave an agreeable character to a working weapon. The dagger remained every bit as effective, but the splayed person on the hilt added a touch of playful luxury to the serious business of stabbing. By way of a modern anthropoid corkscrew, the author lures us away from an obsession with symbolism and encourages us to look for a more down-to-earth 'psychological functionality' in decorated objects.

A northern Neolithic? Clay work, cultivation and cultural transformations in the boreal zone of north‐eastern Europe, c.5300–3000 bc

“…Considered against this background, the clay figurines that appear in eastern Fennoscandia simultaneously with pottery may not represent specific beings of a particular form as such, but are about recognizing the more general‐level perception and idea that land and soils can have properties like sentiency and sociality. Shaping clay into ‘organic’ forms created a meaningful interface for communicating and bonding with an inspirited earth – understanding and negotiating two‐way relationships between people and land, similarly as Carlson (, 1323) suggests, in the context of Iron Age daggers, that ‘hilts of anthropoid nature may have helped warriors to connect with their weapons’.…”