Figurines as multiple art : Studying the shape and forms of Neolithic Statuettes

Abstract: The focus of this paper is on Neolithic figurines and the type of plurality found in four statuettes. We follow why three dimensional figurines are a part of many museum collections and yet documentation is often comparatively scarce compared to other fields of archaeology. How this is connected to figurine’s uncertain imagery and why their visual ambiguity raises questions about what is deemed ‘cultural and well formulated art’. Scandinavian figurine character and plural imagery is compared with multirepresentational statuettes from other parts of the European continent. The result of exploring Neolithic figurine’s art is with an aim to broaden insights into what the statuettes depict. This includes studying why ceramic moulded art is easier to understand, when each sculpture is allowed several interpretations. Seeing them as pluralistic is a move that invites modernity to examine unexplored areas of what their combinations represented for the cultures that produced them. The paper examines an artistic approach to figurines and asks if art can enable archaeologists to see three dimensional images as a definable form of expression that belongs to the Neolithic period’s accomplishments?