Tracing the provinces in clay figurine production in 3rd-millennium BCE Mesopotamia: integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches
2025, 34, No. 1
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Abstract
In recent decades, the corpus of clay figurines from 3rd-millennium BCE Mesopotamia has grown significantly, highlighting the need for a comprehensive, up-to-date synthesis that defines the most significant characteristics of this aspect of material culture at both regional and cross-regional levels. Adopting a combined qualitative and quantitative approach, this study goes beyond a review of existing figurine typologies to offer a diachronic analysis of the frequency of different figurine classes based on a large dataset covering 29 sites across the study area. As a result, three main provinces of clay figurine production have been identified, as well as several contact zones exhibiting mixed affinities. Each province represents a distinct tradition, evidenced by separate regional types as well as region-specific diachronic patterns in the frequency of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, their main categories, and the proportional relationships among the different animals represented. These results pave the way for future in-depth comparative analyses of regional patterns in clay figurine production in relation to environmental, social, cultural, and economic differences among Mesopotamian subregions.
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