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This chapter explores the ways in which ancient Near Eastern visual representations may shed light on the role and significance of hair in ancient Israel. Critical throughout are the ways in which artists of various ancient Near Eastern cultures portrayed Israelites and their neighbors. Work with the artistic representations and the material culture of hair underscores critical methodological issues pertaining to the way we see and to the psychological, social, and political dimensions of hair as sign and symbol. The study points further to the complex relationships between hair and identity in cultural and multicultural settings. Important resources include possible depictions of Israelite warriors in the Egyptian relief of Merneptah at Karnak, depictions of Philistines from Medinet Habu, the drawings on storage jars from Kuntillet Ajrud, Judean pillar figurines, the Assyrian depiction of the Israelite king Jehu paying obeisance to Shalmaneser III, and the Assyrian Lachish reliefs.

Because ancient Israel maintained copious literature that is theological in nature and the Golah community invested much energy in reflection on worship, it is important to consider how the situation in the homeland impacted theological conceptions of reality. This chapter considers biblical perceptions of what was considered by some as the ‘heterodox’ religiosity of Templeless Judah. Biblical literature about Templeless Judah remains almost exclusively focused on the on-going worship of deities either in distinction to or in addition to Yahweh. The chapter provides an overview of the types of worship practices attributed to the population in the homeland. In conjunction with that discussion, it is noted that the evidence for these practices does not stem from sixth-century Judah itself and tends to serve a greater theological agenda.

This chapter discusses Israelite goddesses, terracotta figurines, and the emergence of free-standing terracottas in Israel and Judah. It then provides two key contexts between Cave 1 (Ophel) in Jerusalem (Judah) and area E-257 in Samaria (Israel). Finally it looks at the repertory of Judean terracottas in the 8th and 7th centuries bc.

Several figurine forms—figurine heads, human “mud men,” flat-backed figurines, hand-molded figures attached to braziers, rattle-figurines, animal heads and feet attached to jars, and heads attached to flutes—have been found at Xaltocan, a Postclassic site found in the Basin of Mexico. Although these figurines may account for various genres because of their different functions and forms, they are taken together as a single homogeneous artifact category. While Xaltocan's figurines are not recognized in the context of practical use, and as the figurines are often broken, recent thinking regarding embodiment, especially thoughts about how bodily experiences and sensations constitute identity, may aid in our understanding of the artifacts. This chapter argues that Xaltocan people utilized different types of figurines to present the body in various contrasts, and the chapter further looks into how these contrasts represent different aspects of social identity.

The most significant and largest temple-pyramid in the Tenochtitlan or the Aztec imperial capital was a ceramic figurine. Although these ceramic figurines were easy to transport and were widely available, they have often been recovered broken from household debris in various villages. These figurines have been found in various places such as in household shrines, wall niches, and even in sweat baths. However, these figurines were excluded from Templo Mayor offerings, probably because the figurines included in such offerings were often made of copal. Copal primarily comes from trees of the species Bursera bipinnata. The resin emits a pleasant-smelling white smoke when burned, and it is often believed that this pleased the gods. This chapter attempts to examine the iconographic and historical relationship between the ceramic figurines and the copal figurines.

The Sechín Alto Polity, centered in the Casma Valley on the north coast of Peru, constructed the largest mound structures in the New World during the Initial Period (2100–1000 B.C.). The polity united at least six inland sites and three coastal satellites into a political and economically cooperative unit within which different sites and different monumental structures had distinct, but complementary, functions. Prominent among the artifacts that define the Sechín Alto Polity are ceramic figurines. Examples are consistently from domestic or residential contexts; most (more than 350 fragments) were recovered from Sechín Alto site, the polity capital, where they were likely manufactured. Iconography within Andean archaeology of the figurines connects them with warrior figures and victims depicted in the Cerro Sechín stone carvings and by extension with anthropomorphic friezes that adorn the temple mound of Moxeke within the Sechín Alto Polity. These data suggest that the Casma figurines may represent distinct groups of people who in turn reflected sacred vs. secular aspects of Casma Valley society.

Evolutionary psychologists reduce human beauty to female sexual attractiveness in the context of mate selection. Rather than considering other forms of human beauty, this chapter shows how their account is flawed. After reviewing the evidence and debating whether our ancestors shared similar preferences, it is accepted than many markers of female physical beauty are recognized cross-culturally. The main variable is body mass: the more unreliable the food supply, the higher the weight found attractive. But the main argument is that our interest in beauty typically takes in more than physical appearance. It is concerned with identity, self-presentation, and social performance more generally. As such it is decoupled from mate selection, being implicated in a wider social assessment. This account makes clearer how human physical beauty falls into line with other varieties of human and nonhuman beauty that call forth aesthetic reactions.

Although women's roles in prehistory have been the subject of debate for well over a century, interest in gender ideology has emerged in the archaeological literature only within the last decade. Much of the recent work on these early representations has either revived the nineteenth-century notion that, in early societies, power was initially vested in women, or has sidestepped the issue of gender and women altogether. A well-constructed approach to these figurines that incorporates feminist and/or gender ideologies and sound archaeological arguments has yet to be designed. Some well-known works argue that the abundance of female figurines in prehistoric contexts of Greece and southeastern Europe reflects an early, pan-Mediterranean belief in a Great Mother Goddess, a matriarchal social structure, and a time when women ruled either supreme or at least in partnership with men. In order to better understand the interrelationships among gender studies, prehistoric figurines and the Great Goddess theory, this chapter examines the interpretive history of Greek Neolithic figurines.

One of the most notable features of Mesoamerican figurines is that they are not without iconic quality—they are able to portray humans, animals, and supernaturals in small-scale and round forms. These figurines should be perceived as much more than iconic referencing since they serve as social process indices of the ancient people who made and utilized them. Also, they are able to heighten the understanding of ancient Mesoamerican political economies, ritual and religion, gendered ideologies, and the various aspects of social practice and change. Examining these figurines draws attention to heterarchical or “bottom-up” models compared to the conventional “top down” models which are often used. As these figurines have rarely become the main focus in scholarship, this book highlights how important these figurines were to the Mesoamerican peopls through presenting case studies regarding different theoretical frameworks and approaches.

Compared to examining gender, age groups, social political structures, and other such concepts of ancient cultures, looking into how these concepts are incorporated in Gulf Coast Olmec material culture is especially difficult because no ethnohistoric or ethnographic resources, as well as hieroglyphic or pictographic texts, are available. Since the area is a tropical rainforest environment, only the Formative period glyphs that are made of ceramic and stone survive. The handmade ceramic figurines are found to be the most common form of Olmec sculpture, and these have to be thoroughly examined in order to arrive at an adequate understanding of these cultures. Looking into the iconography attributed to these ancient sculptures may help us to gage relevant insights into imagery. This chapter attempts to focus on how the imagery reveals sex, gender, and age groups.

Looking into the Olmec style of art brings about intense debates among Mesoamerican archaeologists. Certain disagreements are brought about by the meaning of this style particularly in terms of early Mesoamerican cultures and people since the question arises regarding how this style can be connected to the local emulation or the migration of Gulf Olmecs. This chapter attempts to show how the Olmec-style figurines originated from the Gulf Olmec peoples, and it looks into the fact that some of these figurines were found in areas beyond the Gulf. The links associated with these discoveries are said to be related to extreme colonization.

The three questions raised by the previous chapters are the following: Is there a feasible project that can be referred to as Mesoamerican figurine studies?; What are the necessary elements, and how can these be supplied?; and Can this project cover the diversity in the various approaches and accommodate contradiction? In this sense, scholars have focused on this particular area have to consider carefully the subject of study and how different interpretations should be handled. This chapter presents an argument for contextual analyses attributed to the life histories of miniaturized representational objects that includes media, representational content, scale, and semiosis forms under the heading of “Mesoamerican figurines.” This final chapter attempts to define figural materialities, miniaturization, and other important aspects of Mesoamerican figurines.

“Plant-Female Iconography in Neolithic Europe” covers the Neolithic transition to agriculture in the Aegean and Europe, which was accompanied by the production of a large corpus of anthropomorphic figurines, a genre dominated by images of women. Figurines with cereal grain eyes reminiscent of those at Sha’ar Hagolan, have been found in Greece, and this symbolic association between plants and women tracked the spread of agriculture into Europe. There female figurines appear bearing grain impressions, or incised with plant imagery. The dot and lozenge motif found on some figurines has been interpreted as symbolizing the planted field. Female images from the megalithic era of Malta, including engravings on the base of the monumental statue of a woman at the Tarxian temple, reveal symbols evidencing strong plant-female associations. This association shows continuity throughout the secondary products revolution and the Chalcolithic period and continues into the stratified patriarchal societies of the Bronze Age.

This chapter focuses on the craft production that provided the inhabitants of the Alto Balsas with a viable alternative to migrant labor from around 1950 to the mid-1980s. Originally, craft production was mainly for home use: women made jars for holding water and pots for straining the lime water used to soak corn. Men made firecrackers used in religious celebrations, or burned wood to make charcoal. Some of these objects were sold or traded in neighboring towns. In the early 1950s, young men in the town of Ameyaltepec started to experiment with painting designs on various surfaces, to create something to sell to outsiders. Other forms of craft production were also initiated or invented; some villages specialized in making masks, others in carving wooden figurines or decorating gourds, clay ashtrays, and bowls.

This chapter focuses on the microscale of political analysis by considering how individuals, households, factions, power blocs, and communities participate in the politics of the Classic period. The topics examined are: the foundations of political power, the role of authority and legitimacy, claims to power, discourses of power, the existence and role of councils, the political power of commoners, and the rituals of politics depicted in Maya art in public stone monuments, in portable polychrome vessels, and in small figurines.

Recent archaeological research on economic systems have moved from static models of goods manufacture and exchange to those that emphasize the social practices and symbolic meanings that shape (and are, in turn, shaped by) the value, production, and circulation of goods. This chapter by Christina T. Halperin examines 2,767 ceramic figurines from the Motul de San José region in relation to such shifting modes of valuation and meaning. It assesses figurine manufacturing techniques, the context of production, and figurine density distributions across the social landscape in relation to their imagery and performative use. The combination of these data indicate that while some figurines may have served as prestige goods or indicators of hierarchical social difference, most figurines were widely circulated and easily accessible to elite and common peoples. These groups, and especially women and children, incorporated them into their domestic and public performances, rituals, and entertainment. Furthermore, variability in their distribution between the Motul de San José region and other Maya sites reveal that the social meanings and roles of figurines were not uniform across the Maya area, and point to the value of examining artifacts from multiple scales and types of analyses.

Small, hand-modeled, anthropomorphic figurines of fired clay are abundant in Middle Preclassic (1000–350 BCE) Mesoamerica, especially Central Mexico, the Isthmus, and regions to the south. They are variably present in the southern Maya lowlands and virtually absent in the northern lowlands, raising many questions about their meanings and uses. I propose that Middle Preclassic lowland Maya ceramic figurines: 1) were manipulated in integrative community renewal rituals associated with females and maize, and celebrated in early versions of E Groups; and, more speculatively, 2) were icons related to development of head-variant glyphs used in the script-iconography of the 260-day sacred almanac.