Prehistoric figurines : representation and corporeality in the Neolithic / Douglass W. Bailey.

Format:

• Book

Author/Creator:

• Bailey, Douglass W. (Douglass Whitfield), 1963-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• Figurines, Prehistoric--Balkan Peninsula.
• Figurines, Prehistoric.
• Balkan Peninsula--Antiquities.
• Balkan Peninsula.
• Antiquities.

Physical Description:

xix, 243 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2005.

Summary:

• Prehistoric Figurines presents a radical new approach to one of the most exciting but poorly understood artefacts from our prehistoric past and transforms the study and interpretation of prehistoric figurines from Neolithic southeast Europe. The book explores the ways in which people use representations of human bodies to make subtle political points and to understand their own identities and to negotiate their relationships with friends and enemies. Moving beyond the traditional mechanisms of interpretation, the argument is an original and coherent interpretation of prehistoric figurines from southeastern Europe.
• The author isolates and examines four critical conditions: figurines as miniatures; figurines as three-dimensional representations; figurines as anthropomorphs; and figurines as representations. From these discussions he propels the debate past the limitations of the outdated interpretations of figurines as Mother-Goddess and investigates individual prehistoric figurines in their original archaeological contexts and in terms of modern exploitations of the human form. He examines not what figurines were, but how and why they fulfilled the variety of roles that they might have played, asking what it is about a figurine's physical and visual condition that makes it successful as a votive, portrait or other manifestation of material and visual culture. The book benefits from the author's close understanding of the material culture and the prehistory of the Balkans and from recent developments in the fields of visual culture studies and social and cultural anthropology.

Contents:

• Introduction
• Miniaturism and dimensionality
• Hamangia
• Anthropomorphism : dolls, portraits and body parts
• Cucuteni/tripolye
• Visual rhetoric, truth and the body
• Thessaly
• Subverting and manipulating reality
• Corporeal politics of being in the Neolithic.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-235) and index.

ISBN:

• 041533151X
• 0415331528

OCLC:

56686499