Terracotta Figurines in the Persian Achaemenid Near East: New Perspectives from the Unpublished Materials of Tell Mardikh, Syria

• Applicant: Dr. Maria Gabriella Micale
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 416989970

Terracotta figurines form an important part of the material culture of the ancient Near East and seem to have a central position also under the Achaemenids, especially in the western regions of the Empire. A comprehensive study of these materials has been lacking for several reasons: because they are figurines, which are often interpreted as products of popular culture, and perhaps also because they are of Persian period, whose levels are often underrepresented in the archaeological literature of ancient Syria and Mesopotamia. Two further factors negatively contributed to the proper evaluation of the figurines of this period and to the formulation of a proper method of research in the panorama of materials and iconographies of Syria and neighboring regions at the turn of the second half of the first Millennium BC: the lack of a reliable stratigraphical context and the evaluation of anthropomorphic figurines in the light of misleading categories of interpretation, such as dressed vs. naked female figures, Greek vs. “Oriental” iconography, deity vs. devotee. The consequence is a scholarly constructed framework of interpretation which is difficult to break.In the incomplete panorama of published specimens from the Persian Achaemenid period, the study of the coroplastic production in the Persian Achaemenid Near East from the perspective of Tell Mardikh and its unpublished materials (ca. 3000 pieces) opens an important opportunity of research thanks to three main elements: 1) the extension of the corpus; 2) the controlled stratigraphy of provenance; 3) the architectural context of provenance. Considering the critical points of the past research devoted to the figurines of the Persian Achaemenid period highlighted above, the main objectives of the project can be thus summarized as follows:1) to create a catalogue of the pieces from Tell Mardikh based on the identification, classification, and hierarchization of relevant attributes; 2) to establish a definitive association between the terracotta figurines and the stratigraphy and architecture of Tell Mardikh;3) to re-evaluate the assemblages containing similar figurines of the same period from other sites in Syria (central, coastal and eastern) in terms of attributes, technique of production as well as stratigraphy and architectural context, thus creating a distributional map and comparison to neighboring regions;4) to assess an archaeological and historical framework of interpretation of the production, use and distribution of terracotta figurines; and the circulation of the iconographies documented in the terracotta figurines of the period throughout Syria, the Mediterranean and the Near East.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants