17 Representing Humans in Neolithic Europe 5000–2000 bc Chapter 2 Monuments and Miniatures: Representing Humans in Neolithic Europe 5000–2000 bc Chris Scarre The production of anthropomorphic images among the early farming communities of Europe was highly variable. In some regions, notably the Balkans, such images seem to have been relatively common, and fred clay fgurines are regularly discovered both in graves and setlements (Bailey 2005; Chapman this volume). In many other regions of Europe, by contrast, Neolithic human representations are exceedingly scarce. Such is the case in Britain and Ireland, where despite the well-known carvings on exposed rock surfaces and megalithic blocks, the motifs employed are apparently non-fgurative, consisting mainly of spirals, cup marks and geometric forms. Was there, as some have suggested, a taboo on representations of the human form in certain areas of western Europe? Human imagery during the Neolithic period falls into distinct categories. In frst place are the fred- clay fgurines, familiar from the Balkans but found also through central Europe westwards. Whether these fgurines were all in some way part of a single tradition, or are manifestations of convergent trends among unconnected societies, is open to debate. A second category of human imagery is the series of monolithic (ofen megalithic) representations found mainly in south-central and southwestern Europe in the form of carved stone stelae or statue-menhirs. These too form a broad family of related images, some perhaps drawing upon each other, others independ- ent in origin. Finally there are the human depictions in the rock art of the Alpine zone, southern France, Iberia and Scandinavia. They include the ‘hunter’s art’ of northern Scandinavia, although the majority of the famous south Scandinavian examples belong to the second millennium bc or later, as do many of those in the Alps. The variable distribution of human representa- tions across Neolithic Europe must hold consider- able signifcance. Why are there so many fred clay fgurines in southeast Europe, and so few of them in other areas? A scater of broadly similar fgurines, gen- erally belonging to the earlier stages of the Neolithic (sixth/ffh millennium bc), extends across central Europe and into eastern and southern France. In the Rhineland, they made a brief appearance during the late sixth millennium and then disappeared. In the Paris basin, they were produced during the late ffh millennium and then abandoned. Such fgurines are altogether absent from the greater part of northwest Europe, and that contrast poses intriguing questions about the role of fgurative traditions in these difer- ent societies. Is it possible that human representations were made in perishable materials that have not sur- vived the passage of time? Figurines are of course only one of the kinds of human representation that were produced by Neo- lithic societies, and while northwest Europe lacks fgurines it does have depictions of the human body in other media. These include the rock engravings of the Alps and Scandinavia, and the rock-shelter paintings of Levantine Spain. Furthermore, along the Atlantic façade and around the west Mediterranean, standing stones carry anthropomorphic carvings or are shaped in human form. The most elaborate are those carved in the round, such as the south French statue-menhirs of the Rouergat group. It is important to recognize also that even standing stones that are unshaped and undecorated may represent humans, as analogies from Madagascan ethnography suggest (Parker Pearson & Ramilisonina 1999). Thus the many thousands of standing stones in Atlantic Europe might each have stood for an individual person. The iconographic distance that separates the unshaped menhirs of western Europe from the fred clay fgurines of the southeast renders hazardous any atempt to treat these human representations together as parts of a single unifed belief system. Yet that was the approach favoured by Maria Gimbutas. In The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe (Gimbutas 1974) she