Tracing symbols of life and symbols of death in Neolithic archaeological contexts

Abstract

Since Early Neolithic several miscellaneous objects seem to have served for self-decoration keeping though a symbolic meaning as they are found in certain repeated types which must have been recognisable and accepted by all as ‘signifiers‘ of social and ideological information. This inventory was enriched during the following Middle Neolithic, while in the Late and Final Neolithic they seem to be, at least some of them, if not all, the result of systematic production for commercial purpose as they were made in Greece but destined mainly for the markets of Europe, where they were found usually in graves as symbols of social and financial gradations, and in this sense they also functioned symbolically as ‘signifiers’.