Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia By M ...

Chapter 1

Introduction

This book looks at ferocious, whimsical, and erotic female figures cross-culturally, through texts and iconography, beginning with figures depicted in the Anatolian pre-pottery Neolithic (PPNA and PPNB), early and middle Neolithic in southeast Europe—Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia—continuing through the late Neolithic in East Asia, and into early historic Greece, India, and Ireland, and elsewhere throughout the world. We will find that very similar female figures were depicted throughout Anatolia, Europe, Southern Asia, and East Asia in a broad chronological sweep, beginning in the aceramic (pre-pottery), pre-agricultural Neolithic—around 9000 BCE—and existing for millennia, through the middle of the second millennium of this era.

These female figures are found in two iconographic forms: dancing and/or kneeling (for example, the Corfu Medusa, Indic