Description:

Central Europe, Neolithic Period, Vinca culture, ca. 5700 to 4500 BCE. A delightful ceramic zoomorphic figure that was once part of a vessel. It has doubly-incised eyes and a pattern of incised triangles around its remaining body; the animal is a quadruped with almost no ears and a short snout, but cannot be assigned to a specific species; it may be a mythological figure or a chimera. Remains of white pigment are in the incised lines. This may have been a vessel lid, as Vinca potters are known to have produced a wide array of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic lids. Literally thousands such figures were found at the Vinca type site, a large burial mound at Vinca-Belo on the banks of the Danube River near Belgrade. Comes with custom stand. Size: 3.4" L x 2.25" W x 4.55" H (8.6 cm x 5.7 cm x 11.6 cm); height on stand: 5.3" (13.5 cm)

The Vinca produced striking and unique pottery in the Neolithic, much of it figural. Some scholars have linked the rise of these figurines to an increasing sense of place and property in the landscape; people at this time seemed to be very interested in marking their location and returning again and again to certain spaces in the landscape, and there is speculation that figurines like this one may have been representative of individuals and left in places to denote ownership or at least a connection to the geography.

Provenance: ex-Marko Milenkovic collection, Belgrade, Serbia, then Vienna, Austria, collected from the 1950s to the 1970s

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#123474

  • Condition: Piece is a fragment as shown. Nice remaining detail and some light surface deposits.

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June 28, 2017 7:00 AM MDT
Louisville, CO, US

Artemis Fine Arts

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