Ambiguous symbols: why there were no figurines in Neolithic Britain

Abstract

In this paper I discuss the scarcity of representational art, and particularly of representations of the human body, in Neolithic Britain, in contrast with the Neolithic of south-east Europe. My suggestion is that this contrast can be linked with differing notions of personal identity and bodily integrity. In later Neolithic Britain, a complex mode of non-representational decoration developed, which elaborated the practice of making reference to absent persons and things by using deliberately ambiguous motifs, which connected past and present as well as remote locations.