Southeast European Neolithic Figurines

This chapter discusses the diverse approaches to fired clay figurines from the Neolithic of southeastern Europe (6500–3500 bp) and suggests that although significant progress has been made in recent work, there remain significant limitations to our understanding of how these objects were used and what they meant to people in the Neolithic. Critical discussion focuses on the most significant (even if misguided) approaches: archaeomythology, cult, and religion; fragmentation and breakage; corporeality and materiality; communication; identity, status, and social structure; and formal description and comparison. The chapter concludes with a radical proposal: an art/archaeology approach that disarticulates the figurines from their original prehistoric contexts, uses, and meanings, and exploits them to make new evocative work.