Without Head Human Figurines in two Snag-e Chakhmagh and Zaghe Collections

Authors

1 PhD in Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

3 Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

4 Head of the Near Eastern Department of the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany.

Abstract

Abstract
One of the characteristic of Neolithic material of Near Eastern archaeology is the human and animal clay figurines. Due to the fragility of unfired clay, many of the discovered figurines where broken and in many cases it was the neck or the head of the figurines which were broken. This was considered as if the breakage has been done porously. In few regions such as Levant, some figurines were discovered which had hole in their neck. The hole shows if the head of the figurine was removable or replaceable. Until now no report shows the presence of this type of figurine in Iran. A revise of two collection of Sang-e Chakhamagh and Zaghe figurines of Iran, respectively belong to Neolithic and transitional Chalcolithic, shows if this types of figurines are existing in Iran’s figurines collections. With research on the two mentioned collections, this paper fallow two aims; The first aim is to add the Iran’s samples to the geographical distributional of removable head figurines and the second aim is to interpret this types of figurines in Sang-e Chakhmagh and Zaghe collections. The data of this research has been gathered through museum survey and also library research. The data was analyzed qualitatively. The main question which this paper is built on is: how the head and face were represented in Sang-e Chakhamgh and Zaghe’s human figurine collctions? This research could be classified as Historic-cultural researches. This research shows that the geographical distribution of removable head figurines was not limited to Levant and covered wider regions that has been thought. The result shows that omitting the face of figurines may show that the producers refused to refer a specific person. Also, the possibility of removing head may have brought the possibility to change the identity, gender or the age of the figurine. 
Keywords: Figurine, Without Head, Iran Neolithic, Zaghe, Sang-e Chakhmagh.
Introduction
In the Neolithic period of Near East, fallowing increased publication, symbolism and artistic works increased (Bar Yosef 1997:171). From other side, in this period due to sedentary lifestyle, the usage of clay increased (Schmadt-Besserat 1974; Richardson 2014). The combination of clay as raw material and symbolical mind of people caused creation lots of human and animal figurines in Neolithic period. Almost in every Neolithic site, some human or animal figurines have been discovered. Most of the discovered figurines were found in pits or inside the living areas (Daems 2017). The usage of unfired clay as raw material for producing figurines caused breakage in different parts of figurines, though most of the breakage were happened in neck or head part of the figurines (Hamilton 1996) From morphological point of view, the clay human figurines of Neolithic period are in a wide variety from very schematic to semi realistic forms. In the cases where the head is preserved, the head is schematic and mostly without facial details. In some cases, instead of head, a very schematic triangle clay was added to the body of the figurine. Beside the head broken figurines, in few examples, a type of figurines from Levant and Turkey were found which had removable and replaceable heads. In these types of figurines, there is a hole in the neck which a head out of wood, bone or other material were attached to the body as the head of the figurine. In few cases, like Nahal Hamar (Twiss, 2001) the small bone heads which used to be attached in the body figurines were discovered. The discovery of this type of figurines caused many debated in the figurines researches. While some of the researches considered the removeable head figurines as a possibility to change identity. (Talalay 2004; Hoder & Meskel 2011) the other researches refer to the possibility of presenting unreal and combined crashers in figurines (Bechler & Crocher 2017).
Until now the archaeological reports shows the presence of this type of figurines in Levant Turkey and south east part of Greek (Bar Yosef & Alon 1988; Kuijt 2002, 2007; Talalay 2004; Akerman 2006; Vernhoeven 2007; Umurtak 2008; Meskel et al., 2012; Hansen 2014; Belcher & Crocher 2017). No archaeological publication reports the presence of this type of Figurines from Iran. The site of Zaghe is located in the plain of Zaghe, in north part of Iran’s central plateau (Negahban, 1984). The chronology shows that the site goes back to the transitional Chalcolithic period (Fazeli et al., 2005; Pollard et al., 2013). The twin sites of Sang-e Chakhmaqh which includes East and West Sang-e Chakhmaqh, are located with a distance of 100 meters from each other’s in an area between Shahrood and Bastam (Masuda et al., 2013).  The West Sang-e Chakhmaqh with a date between 7200-6700 BCE is the only site in East part of Irans plateau which contain pre ceramic period (Roustaei et al., 2015). The similarity in depiction of human face and head in most of the Neolithic sites of Near East could be as a result of inter societies interactions. It seems that through connections and interactions, not only some forms have been transferred but also some meaning and perhaps some functions have been distributed. With concentration on the Zaghe and Sang-e Chakhmagh figurine collections, this paper aimed to have a new look to the geographical distribution of removable head figurines in Neolithic and transitional chalcolithic periods. The main question which this paper is built on is, how the head is represented in Neolithic and transitional Chalcolithic period of Zaghe and Sang-e Chachmaqh. It seems that in both collections there are few number of removable head figurines. In the Zaghe collection, out of 40 figurines which are kept in the National Museum and also the museum of archaeological institute of Tehran University, 3 figurines have hole in their neck. In figurine collection of Sang-e Chakhmaqh, among 22 human figurines, two figurines with hole in their neck were detected.
In each of these figurines, the hole was drilled while the clay has been still wet. In some case like one of the Zaghe figurines, the size of figurine is less than 3 centimeters and therefore the head of this figurine should have been out of light material. It is suggested that the heads were produced out of perishable material like wood or bone which is not preserved. No reports indicate the discovery of separated human head figurines either from Zaghe or Sang-e Chakhmaqh sites. It seems that the possibility of removable head in figurines brought the possibility of changing identity, age or even the status in the figurines.  On the other hand, it is proposed that the figurines which are discovered from the archaeological sites might be not necessary complete even if there is no breakage in the figurines. The discovery of removable head figurines in two collections of Zaghe and Sang-e Chakhmqh shows that the geographical distribution of this types of figurine is not limited to the Levant and Turkey but also it includes at least two Neolithic and transitional Chalcolithic sites of Iran. There might be more of this type of figurine in the other figurine collections and not have been identified till now.  Based on the small size of, figurines from Zaghe and Sang-e Chakhmaqh, it could be suggested that figurines did not have public usage.

Conclusion
A revision of Zaghe and Sang-e Chakhmagh figurines collections shows that manufactory of removable head figurine was not limited to Levan and Turkey but from eastward it was expended to northeast and east parts of Iran central plateau. The figurines of Zaghe and Sang-e Chakhmagh are mostly broken in their necks and heads. In Zaghe, 3 out of 40 and in Sage-Chakhmagh 2out of 22 human figurines had hole in their neck. These holes refer if the figurines had a head which is not remained. From morphology point of view, the perforated figurines could be classified in the same morphology group as the other figurine of each collection though it seems if their function may have been different. Some researcher suggested if there was a link in the meaning of these types of figurines and the tradition of skull plastering. So far no reports refer to discovery of plastered skull in Neolithic of Iran and this makes the proposed suggestion somehow unacceptable. It could be said that omitting face and head in figurines may shows if the producers refused to represent specific character. Based on the small size, it could be proposed if these figurines did not have public usage.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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