Abstract
The present article tries to assess the ways that animal bodies were represented in the Neolithic of Northern Greece. Contending that representations always have a material presence (be they spoken, depicted or anything else), an attempt is made to sort out how the specificity of this presence constitutes a frame of reference for the deployment of social action. Animal representations seem to be particularly related with certain materials, especially clay, and certain objects, mostly clay vessels. It is suggested that these objects allow animals to be incorporated in social action in a very specific manner, one that is further defined by the contexts of their use.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Lynn Meskell, Cathy Cameron, Jim Skibo and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments. Maria Pappa has been supportive as always. I would also like to thank the following for allowing me to reproduce the corresponding figures: G. Toufexis for Fig. 2, the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA for Figs. 3 and 4, M. Pappa for Fig. 5 and Ch. Koukouli-Chrysanthaki for Figs. 6 and 7.
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Nanoglou, S. Animal Bodies and Ontological Discourse in the Greek Neolithic. J Archaeol Method Theory 16, 184–204 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-009-9069-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-009-9069-9