Beyond the Image: Composite Female Figurines and Gender Relations of the Near East in the Mid-Sixth Mill. Cal. B.C.E

• Published in: Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins (1953) 2018-01, Vol.134 (1), p.1-27
• Main Author: Streit, Katharina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0012-1169

This study focuses on anthropomorphic clay, stone and bone figurines found in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant at late Pottery Neolithic to Early Chalcolithic sites. Female representations dominate the assemblage of this period. While 'coffee-bean' eyed figurines of seated women and pebble figurines were characteristic of the early Pottery Neolithic (ca. 6200–5800 cal. B.C.E.), those of the Early Chalcolithic (ca. 5800–5200 cal. B.C.E.) show increasing simplification and stylization, in which the female body is reduced to the pubic triangle and, in some instances, eyes. Milevski et al. (2016) recently termed this latter type 'Composite Female Figurines'. These figurines were usually incised on rectangular-shaped pebbles (also known as 'Wādī Raba trapezoid'), carved on bone tubes, or shaped from clay. This shift to a more symbolic, shared iconographic language occurred simultaneously throughout much of the Near East and likely spread through networks of transregional exchange connecting the Halaf culture of northern Mesopotamia, the ʿAmūq C Phase of the northern Levant, and the Wādī Raba culture of the southern Levant. The increasing predominance of female figurines at the early Pottery Neolithic and the stylization of the iconographic language in the Early Chalcolithic is tentatively ascribed to the rise and the subsequent institutionalisation of gender bi-polarity.