THE PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD
[CA. 10.000 - CA. 1050 B.C.]
COROPLASTIC (TERRACOTTA) ART
Throughout the Bronze Age, Cypriots produced handmade terracottas that translated their ideas about fertility and regeneration into clay. There is wide variation in the representation of the human figure in the terracottas from this time. Among the notable creations of the Early and Middle Cypriot periods are scenes from religious and secular life. They appear both as vase decorations and as independent coroplastic creations (for survey of the coroplastic art of prehistoric Cyprus see V. Karageoghis 1991)
EARLY AND MIDDLE CYPRIOT PERIODS (CA. 2500-CA. 1600 B.C.)
Red Polished Ware
Plank-shaped figurines are always female. Even when the breasts are not shown, it is certain that the figurines represent women because f their diadems, necklaces, earrings, and other ornaments. Early Cypriot plank-shaped figurines are stiff and strictly stylized, but by the Middle Cypriot period they have acquired arms and even short legs. They are all handmade; molds were used much later, in the seventh century B.C. Incised decorations on both side indicate facial characteristics, ornaments, and garments. Details of the developed, Middle Cypriot, examples can be seen in relief. Each figurine usually represents a single female figure, occasionally holding an infant. In some cases, a single body is represented with two necks, possibly an effort to represent a male and a female figure together.
Plank-shaped figurines were common during the Early Cypriot III-Middle Cypriot I periods. They do not represent divinities, but there is no doubt that they symbolize concepts of regeneration and fertility. They have long been known from tombs, and recently small numbers have been discovered at settlement sites (frankel and Webb 1996, pp. 187-88; Mogelonsky 1996, p. 20). No sanctuary from this era has yet been located but, should one be found, it may well yield plank-shaped figurines. That flat shape and incised decoration of the early figurines may indicate the copying of wooden statues (xoana) that probably served as cult objects in sanctuaries.
The Cesnola Collection possesses only one early figurine of the plank-shaped type (cat. no. 2) (cf. V. Karageoghis 1991, pp. 49-52, pls. XX-XXXI). The other two are of the developed type (cat. nos. 1, 3). Their breasts and arms are clearly in relief, bent against their chests; catalogue number 3 is a classic example of the developed plank-shaped figurine, with its body and neck elliptical rather than rectangular in section and with its shoulders curving instead of exhibiting the stiff angularity of the earlier types. These figurines once wore earrings, probably of metal or thread; this feature can be observed occasionally on female figurines of the Middle Cypriot period, but it occurs more frequently in the Late Cypriot I and II periods.
Terracotta figurines of animals usually appear as part of the decoration of the rims pf large cultic bowls or the shoulders of vases. Free-standing figurines (cat. nos. 5, 6) are rare (cf. V. Karageoghis 1991, pp.188-91; Mogelonsky 1996, pp.203-4).
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