Robin Skeates

Embodiment and visual reproduction in the Neolithic: the case of stamped symbols

in «Documenta Praehistorica» XXXV, 2008, pp. 179-184

Introduction

This paper is concerned with exploring the cultural and conceptual dimensions of one of the most visually striking categories of portable artefact found at Neolithic and Copper Age sites in Western Asia and Southern Europe, variously described as stamps, stamp-seals or ‘pintaderas’. Previous studies of these objects have tended to focus on the typological classification and stylistic comparison of their decorative motifs, at the same time as speculating on their functional and social significance (e.g. Buchanan 1967; Collon 1990; Cornaggia-Castiglioni 1956; Cornaggia-Castiglioni & Calegari 1978; Dzhanfezova 2003; Makkay 1984; 2005; Türkcan 2007). It has been suggested, for example, that they were used as stamps to print or impress culturally significant patterns onto a range of materials (e.g. cloth, skin, bread and clay). It has also been claimed that their repeated application to certain kinds of people and property could have been used either in socio-economic transactions, to mark identity and ownership, or in ritual performances, to signify and enhance spiritual potency. I have recently published a revised account of these objects (Skeates 2007), in which I explored these artefacts’ various biographies, their reciprocal relations with people, and their embeddedness in cultural processes, with particular reference to their archaeological deposition contexts, their surviving forms, and regional variations in their style (c.f. Prijatelj 2007). Here, I want to summarise some of my conclusions, at the same time as developing some of my interpretations with reference to the themes of embodiment and visual reproduction.

Frequency, distribution and resemblances

Stamps made of baked clay were widespread, but generally infrequent, material elements of Neolithic and Copper Age cultures in parts of Eurasia, which originated in the Near East and spread westwards via communicative human groups to South-East Europe, Greece, Italy and Corsica, between the eighth and third millennia BC. Both resemblances and differences are exhibited by these objects across this large span of space and time. For example, clear similarities have been noted between the material, shapes and decorative techniques of the stamp seals of Nea Nikomedeia in Greek Macedonia and earlier examples from Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey (Rodden 1965). On the other hand, rows of impressed points are an exclusively North Italian decorative element, which predominate in the Liguria region in North-West Italy.

Materials and production

Some of these stamps were made of stone. These included relatively highly valued, rare, durable and coloured stones, which were skilfully and laboriously carved, drilled and polished, particularly in Mesopotamia from the sixth millennium BC, but also occasionally as far away as Greece.

More commonly, however, they are made of unexceptional clays, which their makers probably obtained from relatively accessible local sources, and then worked, perhaps alongside the production of other commonplace and more unusual clay-based products such as daub, pottery vessels, clay tokens and ceramic figurines. Small numbers were quickly modelled by hand, a few quite roughly, and then smoothed. When dried to leather-hard, they were neatly engraved using a range of simple and familiar cutting tools and techniques, perhaps sometimes following the lines of preliminary markings. They were then converted into a solid state through firing, probably in simple hearths, ovens or bonfires, possibly together with other artefacts, with only loosely controlled oxidising and reducing conditions, which gave them variable, matt and earthy, surface colours. The general impression is, then, that these baked clay examples were made by people in a relatively unspecialised ‘domestic mode of production’, using readily available resources, with only limited investment in materials, time and skills... leggi tutto