Anthropomorphic Figurines of South-West Asia Through the Neolithic Transition: Social Function and Interaction Networks

2021-09-11
Anthropomorphic figurines constitute one of the most interesting and equally enigmatic objects of the prehistoric era. These miniature statues of the human form are often perceived as representations of gods or goddesses, and treated as static images of worship. More recent approaches investigating their context and materiality, however, have begun to highlight these objects’ active agency in the construction of personhood and the creation of a sense of place and identity in prehistoric societies, with references to a variety of issues such as gender, identity, regeneration, and ancestry. In tandem with the recent developments in the theory and method of prehistoric figurine studies, this presentation aims to focus upon the thematic variation, raw material choices, manufacture processes, discard patterns and spatial contexts of the Neolithic figurines of South-west Asia through time (c.10000-6000 BC). Our purpose is to understand the shifts in social function and cultural interaction spheres represented by these objects. We will discuss some of our results within the context of our ERC funded ancient DNA project that explores the Neolithic transition in the region.
27th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists

Suggestions

Figurines of the Anatolian Early Bronze Age: the assemblage from Kocumbli-Ankara
Atakuman, Çiğdem (2017-01-01)
Through analysis of a figurine assemblage from the site of Kocumbeli-Ankara, this study aims to re-evaluate the origins, meanings and functions of the Early Bronze Age (third millennium BC) anthropomorphic figurines of Anatolia. Conventional typological approaches to figurines are often focused on their origins and sex; however, such approaches hinder an understanding of the context of the norms of production, display and discard within which the figurines become more meaningful. Following an examination of...
Animal figurines during the early bronze age of Anatolia: the case of Koçumbeli
Ayten, Ebru Gizem; Atakuman, Çiğdem; Department of Settlement Archaeology (2019)
This thesis aims to understand the use of animal figurines at the Early Bronze Age site of Koçumbeli in social context. In order to achieve this aim, 20 animal figurines from Koçumbeli have been examined in terms of their thematic representations, raw materials, production technique, color, breakage as well as their contexts. Thematic evaluations focus on the animals depicted and their sex and age, while the contextual evaluations focus on the spatiality of animal figurines in relation to domestic and buria...
Improved methodology for identification of Goktepe white marble and the understanding of its use: A comparison with Carrara marble
Wielgosz-Rondolino, Dagmara; Antonelli, Fabrizio; Bojanowski, Maciej J.; Gladki, Marcin; Göncüoğlu, Mehmet Cemal; Lazzarini, Lorenzo (2020-01-01)
The provenance of marbles used for ancient statuary and architecture is of utmost importance for archaeologists, art historians and archaeometrists. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive characterisation of the white marble exploited in antiquity in Goktepe (Mugla Province, Turkey) to increase the reliability for identifying this marble in ancient artefacts. A campaign of interdisciplinary archaeological and geological fieldwork undertaken by the Marmora Asiatica project is based on a multi-me...
GANILLA: Generative adversarial networks for image to illustration translation
Hicsonmez, Samet; Samet, Nermin; Akbaş, Emre; DUYGULU ŞAHİN, PINAR (Elsevier BV, 2020-03-01)
In this paper, we explore illustrations in children's books as a new domain in unpaired image-to-image translation. We show that although the current state-of-the-art image-to-image translation models successfully transfer either the style or the content, they fail to transfer both at the sametime. We propose a new generator network to address this issue and show that the resulting network strikes a better balance between style and content. There are no well-defined or agreed-upon evaluation metrics for unp...
Proposal for a non-dimensional parametric interface design in architecture : a biomimetic approach
Arslan Selçuk, Semra; Sorguç, Arzu; Department of Building Science in Architecture (2009)
Biomimesis, the imitation of animate and inanimate forms in nature to inspire new designs, is term introduced in the 20th century. The concept that there exist models and solutions in nature that may improve and optimize the way mankind lives has been the subject of much discussion. Although biomimesis as a well-defined discipline is a relatively recent concept, modeling nature is as old as mankind itself and can be seen in many different forms in all aspects of life. In the field of architecture there have...
Citation Formats
Ç. Atakuman and E. Sürer, “Anthropomorphic Figurines of South-West Asia Through the Neolithic Transition: Social Function and Interaction Networks,” presented at the 27th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Kiel, Almanya, 2021, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.e-a-a.org/EAA2021/Programme.aspx?WebsiteKey=122bcc87-037e-4265-b72a-db2092c01854&hkey=f557022c-8526-45dd-b4ad-edaeb1c77ac8&Program=3#Program.