ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1973, a team of American and Greek archaeologists were digging into the Early and Middle Neolithic (6500-5600 BC) settlement at Achilleion on the southeastern edge of the Thessalian Plain, near the modern town of Farsala in northcentral Greece. In one of the upper layers of the excavation, in an area lacking built features, and consisting of discarded Neolithic material, the team recovered an extraordinary figurine (fig. 7.1).1 The figurine, or at least what remains of it (for it survived only from the neck upwards and part of the forehead is missing) consists of two independent pieces of fired clay, slipped with white paint. One piece represents a cylindrical neck. It is a thin, rounded column of clay, broken at the lower end, where the neck would have met the shoulders, and at the top end where the column tapers to a point. The other piece of the figurine is a representation of a human face. It is very schematically modelled and, seen from the front, is an oval or lozenge shape, widest at the level of the eyes, and almost pointed at the chin and forehead. Running horizontally across the middle of the face, two eyes, formed by two deep, thin incisions are separated by a pointed nose. Low on the face, near the chin, is a mouth, incised and impressed as a flat oval. While it is clear that the mouth is open, the eyes are more difficult to understand: are they closed, or are they open? No other features of the face or head are depicted: there are no ears and no hair. Indeed the face, though clearly human, bears no expression. Seen from the side, the eyes have a more sinister appearance; the look of a person squinting in anger, or even perhaps in incomprehension. I have described expressionless faces in earlier chapters and discussed the potential significances of omitting facial expression. But the face of this Achilleion figurine is something more, or more accurately perhaps, something less. It is life-less, though it does not appear to represent death. It is human, but is it anything more?
