Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and corporeality in the Neolithic by Douglass W. Bailey
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York. 2005. 243 pages, 64 figures, 5 front photographs, ISBN 0-415-33152-8 (pb £25) ISBN 0-415-33151-X (hb £75)
Figurines, and especially prehistoric figurines, have always fascinated
researchers, collectors, the general public and anyone tempted towards art
studies or the history of the human past. Such interest has stimulated a number
of approaches and interpretations of prehistoric figurines that respectively
have triggered critique and alternative suggestions, both however (the initial
interpretations and their critiques), deeply rooted in the researchers’
personal, social and political backgrounds. The new book of Douglass Bailey ‘Prehistoric
Figurines’ is not an exception in this sense. The uncompromising
cut-and-thrust that is a hallmark of Bailey’s previous work on figurines
reaches new peaks in the criticism of any previous understanding of figurines,
before opening up a whole new world of visual culture to welcome and comfort us
in what may seem a radically new approach to figurines.
The book consists of nine chapters, notes, bibliography and index. It is
designed as a mosaic of past and present realms by alternating descriptions of
Balkan (in broad geographical terms) Neolithic lifestyles and figurines
(chapters 3, 5 and 7) with modern (18-20th century AD) concepts of
representation and corporeality (chapters 2, 4, 6 and 8). The reader is
catapulted into the book with the vivid and breath-taking story of discovery of
a prehistoric figurine from the author’s own excavations in Southern Romania.
This initial excitement does not leave the reader till the last page; our
curiosity is successfully nourished by Bailey’s undoubtedly challenging and
stimulating approach.
The introductory chapter sets the scene of the Balkans during the Neolithic and
is basically a revised summary of Bailey’s earlier book (2000) ‘Balkan
Prehistory’. Along with the carefully but repeatedly mentioned
concepts of exclusion and incorporation, interwoven throughout the statement is
what this book is and is not about. The author’s belief is that a better
understanding of Neolithic figurines can be achieved ‘in understanding the how
and why of figurines as visual culture’ (p. 2). Despite the over-exaggerated
(perhaps deliberately) deconstruction of various approaches to figurines,
Bailey is right in his notion that ‘figurine essentialism is damaging’ (p. 13).
What follows the introduction is a world-wide tour in a miniature world – from
bonsai to Disneyland in California. In addition, we are presented with the
results of some experiments of perception in miniature reconstructions and the
insights of a modern artist creating such miniature landscapes. It appears that
miniatures have the (unsuspected?) power to provoke the viewer to ‘complete’
the image, they provide alternative worlds in which the viewer is pleased and
comforted and, ultimately because of their size (one has to get closer to see
and appreciate them), they create an intimate link between the miniature object
and the viewer. These basic points are not difficult to trace in later
discussions of diagnostic types of figurines among the three Neolithic
communities chosen by Bailey as the best illustrations of late prehistoric
figurine production in the Balkans. However, the discussion of miniatures does
not draw elementary parallels with Neolithic figurines but rather alerts the
reader to ‘particular visual and palpable conditions’.
Chapters 3, 5 and 7 present what one would expect to be the backbone of a book
with such a name. Each of them presents a brief but sufficiently detailed
descriptive account of the Neolithic societies of Hamangia (chapter 3),
Cucuteni/Tripolye (chapter 5) and Thessaly (chapter 7). The three chapters
follow one and the same general scheme – a striking beginning through the
introduction of one of the most amazing figurine examples from each community,
followed by a more extended presentation of figurine production; a critical
review of previous figurine investigations and finally the settlement and
burial practices of each of the Neolithic societies. One cannot avoid noting
the overwhelming negativism of the discussion of previous approaches to
Hamangia and Cucuteni/Tripolye figurines, especially in contrast to the much
more balanced acknowledgement of recent, mainly Greek, researches on figurine
representations from the Greek Neolithic. While Bailey’s observations on
previous interpretations of Hamangia and Cucuteni/Tripolye figurines are in
most cases (but not all) correct, he misses the important point of what each
subsequent research owes to previous insights, because it either builds on
them, or develops counter-arguments, or both.
An important contribution of the three chapters is that figurines are placed in
the wider context of the settlement and burial traditions of each community.
Thus, Hamangia figurines, found in both settlements and burials, along with an
array of other mundane or exotic material, are related to ‘a much less anchored
existence, a life-style involving much movement across and through landscapes’
(p. 60). Cucuteni/Tripolye figurines, on the other hand, are viewed in the
light of an almost total lack of formal burial places, together with the shared
settlement values and commitment to the clearly delineated places of
Cucuteni/Tripolye communities, that leads to the conclusion that ‘figurines may
have well been one of the main media through which were expressed appropriate
appearances and relationships among individuals’ (p. 118). Such general
inferences, however, were not the aim of the study and the reader is invited to
await the final interpretations in the last two chapters.
Not so well-grounded in the Neolithic lifestyle are the figurines from
Thessaly. One wonders how to incorporates the permanent tell-settlements and
the rare formal burial areas with the overt sexuality of Thessalian figurines?
Sexuality is far from being the major characteristic of Thessalian figurines
and it would have been more helpful if Bailey had developed further his other
argument concerning the ambiguity of these representations.
The scattered discussions of Neolithic identity and its links to material
culture with relevance to figurines is best summarised on page166 ‘…..Neolithic
communities in SE Europe defined, negotiated and contested individual and group
identity through corporeal means’.
Chapters 4, 6 and 8 are, in fact, extensive answers to the questions that
emerge in each preceding chapter. Anthropomorphism in various forms – dolls,
puppets, portraits, cartes-de-visite, etc. and the ways in which they are used,
designed, presented and can re-present is the subject of chapter 4. The
representation of a human body makes us react and feel – pleasure, shame,
disgust, etc. Therefore, the faceless Hamangia figurines should be understood,
pace Bailey, in their possible engagement with the viewers 5000 years ago – an
engagement that would involve the perception of self and (in relation to) the
others.
Chapter 6 gives selected modern examples and concepts of the type of visual
discourses in which human representations may be used – e.g. a 19th century
picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps or FSA photographs from the American
Depression in the 1930s, or the feminist authors’ notion of the constructed
body, etc. That visual images are politically burdened and create alternative
realities is not a novel insight. What is more important is that Bailey
recognises the Neolithic politics as ‘a new corporealisation of power
relations’ and ‘figurines as part of this process of materialisation, govern
the dimensions of being’ (p. 146). Thus, Bailey seems to be saying that the
elaborate decoration on Cucuteni/Tripolye figurines or their changing forms
through time can be explained in terms of the dynamics of Neolithic politics
and the concepts of representations of being.
Chapter 8 discusses the grand-scale manipulations to which the representations
of human body are capable of. Among others are the issues of subversion, sexual
disruption and affective ambiguity, illustrated by Turner’s picture of
Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps, meant to undermine Napoleon’s own crossing; by
a Dadaistic collage that challenges viewers’ perception and expectation; and
finally by the Andalusian annual carnival, in which the human body is the main
media for the presentation of inverted reality. In this context, the Thessalian
figurines (masks, hyper-sexualised and the like) are to be seen as ‘mechanisms
through which people play out positions of identity, status, sexuality and
belonging within their communities’ (p. 195).
The essence of chapters 2 to 8 is the ever-present importance of the human body
as a visual means in the construction of identity and in political
negotiations. For the Neolithic, it is the corporeal politics of being, in
which figurines are involved and which is also the title of the last chapter.
Chapter 9 synthesises rather than fully develops previous arguments for the
formation of Neolithic identity, different from the identity of the preceding
or the successive societies. Identity was developed through a major paradox, in
which the individual stands for the whole community. Central to these
communities was the process of social homogenisation, alongside the
corporealisation of the self and the person. Through their recurrent
visibility, figurines were arbitrary participants in the social negotiation of
diversity and uniformity. For Bailey, figurines were the Neolithic
‘philosophies of being human’ (p. 202). While such an interpretation is
consistent with the book’s discourse and, to some extent, answers the questions
left open in the preceding chapters, it does not address many other important
questions. How and why exactly such identity has emerged?; is there other
evidence supporting the primacy of corporealisation in the Neolithic?; why are
there so many fragmented figurines?; how would the stone/bone anthropomorphs
and the variety of zoomorphs be incorporated into this visual rhetoric?, etc.
Such questions may not have been the goal of the book but as long as figurines
do not function in a material vacuum, the proposed interpretations need much
more reflexivity. Bailey is convincing in his insistence that something is
missing in the present approaches to anthropomorphic representations but the
book does not lead to a better understanding of Balkan Neolithic figurines.
A few important points should be raised. First, the book is permeated with
questions and while one understands that this is a part of the rhetoric of the
book to challenge the reader, the boundary between being provocative and
disturbing is crossed. Secondly, for a reader familiar with the diverse images
of the Balkan Neolithic, the lack of proper illustrations of many of the
discussed figurines is frustrating, even if not crucial. But how is a Level 2
student or an unconvinced reader to understand the visual impact without even
seeing the object? Insofar as this is a book about visual culture, the visual
is sadly lacking; it is a book about images without the images themselves.
Thirdly, some of the fair criticism that Bailey raises has already been
addressed – e.g. the AMS dating of a group of Hamangia graves from Durankulak
is now in print and another 50 samples are pending. And, finally, there are
some controversial statements (e.g. the lack of diversity of figurine types at
the Balkans or the notion of pits as mainly rubbish deposits), whose
deconstruction is not an aim of the present review but which are without basis
or have tendencies to reduce archaeology to ‘the study of rubbish’.
Disappointed by the contextual approaches and their limits for figurine
interpretation, in his book, Bailey seeks for alternatives and finds it in the
modern impact of visual representation - representation that triggers reactions
and makes the viewer actively complete the incomplete. At the end of the book,
are we convinced by Bailey’s choice of new ideas? Yes and no. Yes, because the
book firmly grounds the issue of corporeality among current approaches to
material culture in archaeology. No, because it fails to put flesh and blood
onto the Neolithic body politic, its reactions and manipulations as vividly as
he does for their modern counterparts. Unless the arguments for figurines as
constituting a philosophy of being are developed further and tied to a living
Neolithic reality, Bailey’ s interpretations will remain (to use his own term)
anecdotal.
Bisserka Gaydarska
Durham
Review Submitted: October 2005
The views expressed in
this review are not necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews
Editor.
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