Abstract:Neolithic and Early Bronze Age anthropomorphic figurines from the Aegean have hitherto constituted separate fields of study. The present article proposes a uniform methodological strategy and theoretical perspective, aimed at uniting both sets of figurines to explore social dynamics through the study of gender. The main ideas discussed focus on the complex ways in which gender identities were constructed, the mechanisms of power negotiation, and the ways in which the physical and cultural body constituted an a… Show more
“…It should be noted that the dominance of female figurines in publications might result from authors' selection of the most representative anthropomorphic objects for the reports. On the other hand, published data on figurines from other Balkan regions include somewhat similar frequencies (Srejović, 1968;Mina, 2008;Becker, 2010). This should be further tested with case studies prior to their inclusion in a broader and more detailed review of represented sex on anthropomorphic artefacts in the Balkans.…”
Section: The Materialization Of Corporealitymentioning
Neolithic bodies are not only manifestations of subjective principles. Social and symbolic norms are also incorporated within the bodies of both actual and represented individuals. These norms often relate to economic and religious notions of society, as well as to effigies. Owing to high population densities in Neolithic villages, only a select group of the inhabitants were buried within settlements or represented in images. This generated a category of privileged individuals and body features, which were related to symbolic principles rather than social hierarchy. Such practices among Neolithic societies in the Balkans are evident within burials and human representations. Individuals buried inside settlements, anthropomorphic house models, and figurines from several sites in Ovče Pole, Pelagonia, and the Skopje Valley are used as case studies in this paper. Placing these sites into a wider geographical context, it is argued that gender, age and body parts were significant criteria in funerary practices and features of corporeality.
“…It should be noted that the dominance of female figurines in publications might result from authors' selection of the most representative anthropomorphic objects for the reports. On the other hand, published data on figurines from other Balkan regions include somewhat similar frequencies (Srejović, 1968;Mina, 2008;Becker, 2010). This should be further tested with case studies prior to their inclusion in a broader and more detailed review of represented sex on anthropomorphic artefacts in the Balkans.…”
Section: The Materialization Of Corporealitymentioning
Neolithic bodies are not only manifestations of subjective principles. Social and symbolic norms are also incorporated within the bodies of both actual and represented individuals. These norms often relate to economic and religious notions of society, as well as to effigies. Owing to high population densities in Neolithic villages, only a select group of the inhabitants were buried within settlements or represented in images. This generated a category of privileged individuals and body features, which were related to symbolic principles rather than social hierarchy. Such practices among Neolithic societies in the Balkans are evident within burials and human representations. Individuals buried inside settlements, anthropomorphic house models, and figurines from several sites in Ovče Pole, Pelagonia, and the Skopje Valley are used as case studies in this paper. Placing these sites into a wider geographical context, it is argued that gender, age and body parts were significant criteria in funerary practices and features of corporeality.
“…A comparison with 567 Early Bronze Age figurines shows that anatomical features continued to be depicted, albeit in a markedly less emphatic way, and that standardized conventions of body representation in terms of posture-gesture were followed. Asexual figurines in both periods share aspects with other figurine categories, representing age-related stages of female bodies, or summary anthropomorphic depictions; anatomically ambiguous figurines suggest that a non-binary gender system may have been a diachronic trend (Mina, 2008a). Although the evidence suggests that gender identities in the Early Bronze Age became more socially constrained, it is not possible to detect social asymmetry.…”
Section: A Multi-layered Gender Approach To Greek Neolithic Figurinesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The introduction, however, of distinct burial grounds, the deposition of rich grave goods, and the use of new prestige objects (e.g. daggers) suggests the primacy of socially prescribed collective identities over gender in the Early Bronze Age (Mina, 2008a). Figure 4.Left: Neolithic anatomically female figurine from Thessaly with hands below modelled breasts, in the Archaeological Museum of Volos (H: 8 cm).…”
Section: A Multi-layered Gender Approach To Greek Neolithic Figurinesmentioning
This article is based on an EAA session in Kiel in 2021, in which thirteen contributors provide their response to Robb and Harris's (2018) overview of studies of gender in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, with a reply by Robb and Harris. The central premise of their 2018 article was the opposition of ‘contextual Neolithic gender’ to ‘cross-contextual Bronze Age gender’, which created uneasiness among the four co-organizers of the Kiel meeting. Reading Robb and Harris's original article leaves the impression that there is an essentialist ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Bronze Age’ gender, the former being under-theorized, unclear, and unstable, the latter binary, unchangeable, and ideological. While Robb and Harris have clearly advanced the discussion on gender, the perspectives and case studies presented here, while critical of their views, take the debate further, painting a more complex and diverse picture that strives to avoid essentialism.
“…Meskell and Nakamura (2005) have experimented with video documentation of figurines to capture the artefacts’ three-dimensionality and the experience of seeing and manipulating them from multiple perspectives. Mina (2008) has discussed gender construction and social identity—in both the Neolithic and the Bronze Age—challenging established notions of social organisation in Aegean prehistory. Her work has also highlighted asexual figurines (Mina 2007) as a distinct category that, although lacking the anatomy of female and male figurines, embodies gender identity.…”
Section: Figurine Studies and Sensorialitymentioning
The image-based discourse on clay figurines that treated them as merely artistic representations, the meaning of which needs to be deciphered through various iconological methods, has been severely critiqued and challenged in the past decade. This discourse, however, has largely shaped the way that figurines are depicted in archaeological iterations and publications, and it is this corpus of images that has in turn shaped further thinking and discussion on figurines, especially since very few people are able to handle the original, three-dimensional, physical objects. Building on the changing intellectual climate in figurine studies, we propose here a framework that treats figurines as multi-sensorial, affective and dynamic objects, acting within distinctive, relational fields of sensoriality. Furthermore, we situate a range of digital, computational methods within this framework in an attempt to deprive them of their latent Cartesianism and mentalism, and we demonstrate how we have applied them to the study of Neolithic figurines from the site of Koutroulou Magoula in Greece. We argue that such methodologies, situated within an experiential framework, not only provide new means of understanding, interpretation and dissemination, but, most importantly, enable researchers and the public to explore the sensorial affordances and affective potential of things, in the past as well as in the present.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
