Figuring it Out (Two Ancient Works)

 

Female Figure of the Spedos Variety

2600-2500 BCE
Bronze Age, Early Cycladic

Marble

7 1/16 x 2 3/16 x 3 3/8 in.

Figures depicting the female form were common throughout the Cycladic islands in the mid-2000s BCE, with each island possessing a unique set of stylistic traits. While many of these figures have been attributed, this one has yet to be attributed. Authorship was not necessarily of central concern, unless it conferred higher order benefits. Within Cycladic culture, the usage of these figures remain unexplained. They are often found within gravesites, and the crossed hands and inability to stand up suggest that these are funerary objects. As fertility remained a central concern throughout the ancient Mediterranean, these objects were likely used in related rituals. There are several examples in Cyclades where these objects were found shattered in great volume, also suggesting that their destruction was just as important as their usage as a ritual object.

The stylization of the sexual objects also speaks to the aesthetic concerns at the moment. Similar to the human effigy pottery of ancient Pre-Columbian America, there existed a desire to abstract human forms so as to perhaps connect with a higher order of being. This constitution is often a co-constitution, whereby the form produces the higher order of being, and the higher order of being produces the form.  

Terra cotta vase, grotesque human form
300 BCE
Pre-Columbian, Cauca Valley Terracotta
9 13/16 x 4 7/16 in.

This pre-Columbian earthenware human effigy pottery acts similarly to the female figures of the Cycladic islands. Despite the long distances dividing the cultures, the abstraction and over-articulation of the sexual organs of the figure suggests a similar function in promoting fertility. However, in addition to the geographical distance, this female figure is distanced from the Cycladic work by its utility as a vessel, for storing liquid, or remains, or something else. In Caucan culture, sitting for the ruler was incredibly important. The sitting position of this figure suggests a reverence for the ruling class for whom this object was likely created. From the Cauca Valley, many of these figural objects were pillaged from shaft chamber tombs that sit well beyond the Earth’s surface, suggesting the high political power for which these figures were produced.

Unlike the Cycladic figure, arms are not crossed but rather open outwards. The Caucans were known for undergoing hallucinogenic transformations, whereby the cosmological divide was less rigid than it is today. These open hands may have been used to evoke this passage across the divide, a passage, that, similar to the Cycladic figures, is also co-constituted. The passage through the cosmological divide occurs through the object, and the object is created by this passage.