0364 - They keep appearing.

At Perdigões enclosure we are now studying the several funerary structures in the context of the project “Mobility and Interaction in South Portugal RecentPrehistory: the role of aggregation centers”. One of the structures is Pit 40, where cremated human remains were deposited. There are thousands of small fragments of burned bones that are being studied in anthropological terms, and among them fragments of ivory items, also burned, keep appearing.

Several represent parts of anthropomorphic figurines like the ones from the same general context already studied and published (Valera & Evangelista, 2014).

Here is the head of one that lost its face. It presents the hair, the ears and even the final traces of the facial tattoos.

A head like the best preserved one, only smaller.

Number of these figurines is now higher than what it was published and will probably grow as the study of the bone fragments progress. The figurines, like the human bodies, are all in small fragments and burned. Would have this analogy been intentional?

On the contrary, the exception above, when deposited, was intentionally completed in a broken leg with a burned white bone (see publication). Body segmentation and body integrity, parts and wholes. Or windows to the Neolithic mind. Something to be discussed in a coming workshop in Lisbon.